It isn't just one of your holiday games
21 June 2004. Inspired by .
"Where's it from?" From cashiers to library assistants, everyone always asks. My wallet currently holds six pieces of plastic or paper containing the eight letters of my surname. And it acts as a conversation starter all over the world.
Both Jon and Fiona report on the recent decision by the Mongolian government to reintroduce surnames after an absence of more than 80 years. Few people can remember what the ancestral family name was; they're having to start again.
But if one were a Mongolian, or if the Mongolian situation were mirrored in our own society, how would we react? If the technology were readily available at a low cost, perhaps the answer would be a genetic Friendster, allowing you test your DNA, input the results and then to re-establish contact with forgotten relatives via online forums. The eventual choice of surname would be decided by majority vote, while a general agreement would be applied not to get romantically attached, for the good of the gene pool.
Each person could be a member of up to four groups (any link further than two generations being regarded as too distant), and you would then be allowed to have up to four surnames, listed in a predetermined hierarchy (paternal grandmother, maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, paternal grandfather, for instance). Here in Spain and in Portugal, people already have two surnames, one maternal and one paternal. An extra two wouldn't be difficult to administer.
Until such time, it's being left open to individual preference - a dangerous thing in nomenclature, as I've already discussed. Explaining your choice of a minor celebrity's moniker would be tricky enough thirty years later. How would you do so after 400? You have your descendants to think of, after all - or perhaps, with the aid of time, such frivolous decisions would become a source of pride. I would be extremely impressed at anyone who could justifiably claim their family name to be that of the most famous and valiant jouster from medieval Worcestershire. History lends fandom a classical kudos. "And who knows, perhaps I'm his descendant," says Wi-Lu Beckham (born in the year 2412) with a smile.
But trend-conscious choices should be avoided. In the absence of our own genomes in a conveniently-readable format, surnames are society's most obvious DNA. They tell a unique oral history of origins, something much more tangible than inherited facial traits. In Jon and Fiona's cases, their names also have meanings of their own within the language they speak. In my own situation, my name bears witness to who I am and why I have a British passport.
Both of my parents were born in the UK but their parents were not. The name even bears scars of being uprooted: although Polish in origin, Polish names rarely, if ever, end in 'sky'. The change in spelling (from 'ski') was almost certainly effected by inefficient British immigration systems in the late 1800s. My name was far from the only one to suffer - in fact, I would be amazed if, faced with entry interviews and questionnaires, more than a few families didn't end up with the kangaroo effect.
With the exception of a few anecdotes and a couple of otherwise-worthless objects, my personal connection to Eastern Europe begins and ends with my name. As far as I know (and we've looked), I have no relatives left in Poland, Belarus or Russia, the three places my family is from. The explanation for this - our religion - also explains why my surname has its current nationality. Although only one carried it with him, what all four of my grandparents left behind is encapsulated in the first seven letters. A reminder of the desperate search for safety, and its eventual happy ending, sits in the misspelling at the end.
If I were able to make the choice in Mongolia, I would urge a local, and not national policy. Names should be thought up using regional dialect words for trades, villages, types of leisure activity. Connections to places and to things, to buildings, to monuments and to local heroes should be sought, rather than the current favourite of choosing the tribe of Genghis Khan, surely little more than a classical version of Beckham. If local connections were made, the flow of people in later generations would serve as permanent reminders of family origins where otherwise they would have been forgotten. This is a unique and important opportunity to scribble family footnotes in the margins of history. It should not be wasted on misplaced and homogenous nationalism.
In my own case, although Google throws up the occasional unexplained anomaly, I'm the last male Losowsky of our family. The baton is now mine to pass on or to drop. Genetically, of course, this is nonsense. But sociologically, the fate of my family's consciousness and the memory of its story depends in part on my future. I hope that, one day, some Mongolians will understand what this means.