What's In A Name?

I switched on BBC Scotland's Television News on Sunday morning to be met with the deep voice of a male Scottish newsreader mangling Iga Świątek's name. It's perfectly reasonable to ask 'where does the 'n' come from?' because unless you know about Polish diacritical marks - the technical term for the various squiggles that change the sound of a letter in many languages - the name looks as though it should be pronounced swiatek or similar.  Most of us know how to say Señora, even if it's written with an ordinary 'n' but in an unfamiliar language, we tend to ignore these marks if we're not set up with the right keyboard. I'm guilty of it too, although when I was writing The Last Lancer, I went through the final draft and reinstated them all. 

I'm usually very understanding about the difficulties of Polish pronunciation for English monoglots. But in this case, I was irritated enough to shout at the television. He didn't mispronounce it. He mangled it. And - given that she had just won the Wimbledon Women's Singles Final - her name had been on the news since the night before. He should have known. He could have asked his phone. I've just done it, and up popped a clear audio file. Given the ease of finding out the pronunciation of foreign words, it has become ill mannered not to try, given a little advance notice. But he simply couldn't be arsed. 

My own name is almost invariably mangled. I've spent my whole life reassuring apologetic people, and I honestly don't mind. I'm happy to answer to Catherine. And I know exactly what it feels like to be confronted with a spelling and potential pronunciation  I've never met before. After all, I worked in Finland for two years. But then I'm not a BBC announcer. 

My Scottish doctor pronounces my surname perfectly, without being prompted. And when the late great Ray Bradbury introduced my radio dramatisations of some of his Tales of the Bizarre many years ago (I did them along with the wonderful Brian Sibley) he pronounced my name properly as well.

But from my first day at school until - well - now, it has been challenging. I could have changed it, but I was damned if I was going to. One of my first publishers persuaded me to change the spelling, so that it looked a bit English, but it also looked ridiculous to anyone with even a little knowledge of Slavic languages and I changed it back as soon as possible. 

Now, it's increasingly a badge of being 'foreign' and although we seem to have passed through an all too brief period of that not mattering, once again, it does. My late biochemist dad was a refugee alien who, by the time he retired, had a 'double doctorate'. He had a PhD but he was also a Doctor of Science -  a higher doctorate, only awarded for significant and original contributions to a scientific field, usually at the peak of a fine career. In Germany, where they like to acknowledge such things, he was once called 'Doctor Doctor' which amused him. 

What he was never awarded, in spite of his popularity, the distinction of his work, the way in which he wore his learning lightly, his ability to engage with and to manage people, was the headship of his department in the Scottish government research institute where he worked for many years. That went to the man developing 'spreadable butter'. 

At the end of his career, he spent two wonderful years based at the IAEA in Vienna, touring the world as visiting expert in agricultural projects for developing countries. It was a kind of reward, I think, and he enjoyed it very much. It was also a small slap on the face to the authorities here who had baulked at promoting a foreigner. 

There is a weird kind of low key xenophobia in the British psyche. People like to pretend it isn't there, but it is. All my life, I've been aware of it, popping up when least expected, even in my own career as a writer. I once wrote a short story about it, called Mind the Gap. You can find it in my anthology A Bad Year for Trees. Almost all of the stories in that anthology have been published in various magazines or collections, and two of them have had another life as radio plays. Mind the Gap was turned down immediately and brusquely, given that I was an experienced and very well published writer and might at least have expected the courtesy of an explanation. I think it made the editor feel deeply uncomfortable. I certainly hope so. 

What's in a name? Quite a lot as it turns out.