By Any Other Name

On my first day at my new high school, we gathered in the echoey school hall for orientation. The Director of Studies, an intellectually formidable foreign language teacher, was charged with taking the register and assigning us our new classes. 

When he got to my name, he said: Miranda [pause] Weindling 

VINEdliing delivered in a wincing German accent, each syllable tugged from the top of his throat. 

I said: It’s Weindling 

WINEdling delivered in crisp Received Pronunciation with the all-important ‘wuh’. 

He raised his eyebrows but moved on. 

Growing up, my last name embarrassed me. It doesn’t lend itself easily to native English speakers, where ‘ei’ is assumed to be pronounced ‘ee’. I was always a variation, usually Weendling, but Windling, Wendling, and Wilding were popular too. I would politely correct people but take my frustration out on scrambling, stuttering, cold callers. When they finally got some version of the name out, I would inform them that the person they are asking for doesn’t live here, doesn’t exist, and then slam down the receiver hard. Now, I am kinder and care much less. It’s an awkward name after all; one that never gave itself over entirely to its new tongue when it arrived in the UK and was anglicised into palatability. Soft English W, but otherwise faithfully Germanic. 

Sanitising ‘ethnic’ names is still a common practice in the Western world, and in the 1940s, it was a necessary survival mechanism for those with Jewish, Germanic, and Slavic names. Szmuel, Hirz, and Aaron Wonsal—already adapted from the native Polish Wonskolaser—became Sam, Harry, and Albert of Warner Brothers fame. Betty Perske evolved to Betty Bacal (adapted from her mother’s maiden name, Weinstein-Bacal) before finding success as Lauren Bacall. There were also the Rosenbergs, my maternal great-grandparents, who fled the 1905 Jewish pogrom in Odesa. They lived safely as the pronounceable Rosenbergs in England for 30 years, but with the rise of Nazism and trauma-infused paranoia, attempts were made to conceal their ancestry. They re-anointed themselves Ross, complete with a fabricated paper trail, born from paranoia, to establish themselves as a humble protestant British family.

But now I’m living in Austria, I’m not sure what my name is any more. It has returned to its motherland transformed by its travels. I am addressed as Frau Weindling (with a V, ‘ei’ as in ‘eye’ intact; a name that rolls off a native German-speaking tongue). My substandard grasp of the German language means people usually assume I have married into the name. But no, I’ve worn it haphazardly since birth. If I have to introduce myself, I say, I’m Miranda [pause] Weindling (with a wuh). And then I repeat ‘Weindling’ (with a V)) before awkwardly adding, ‘it’s Austrian originally.’