Thursday, February 05, 2009

What's in a Name?

What name you ask? My family name. Not the one I received through my mother's marriage but my ancestral ones...

I really wasn't given diddly for information. For example, on my 18th birthday I was informed that my grandmother was north carolina cherokee from a reservation and I was given the name of the reservation. They even gave me a book on Cherokee Indians as a birthday present.

Thanks, mum & dad for the 4-1-1. Could have told me sooner, but hey. Who's gonna nit-pick. I know what year she was born. But only because my memory can be freakishly good sometimes.

I'm in a lull here @ work whilst the requirements get finalized on my next project. And to my credit I have read 100 pages out of a technology book today, and written a prototype (yay, me)

But now my eyeballz feel like they're gonna fall out so I started researching my family name.

I was told we were either Van/Von __________ . Name omitted for privacy concerns. And that part of our family was Swedish and the other was northern Germanic. Well, they got the Northern Germany part right. The last name is a different spelling of a region in northern germany.

But guess what? We're dutch. We definitely were Vans (not von which is a swedish prefix)... And part of our family stayed in Germany on the other side of the border and part of my family migrated to the Netherlands. Makes perfect sense.

No wonder I'm such a water freak. The Dutch were fierce sea farers.

Well I guess it's a good thing I just booked myself @ the world-famous hemp hotel in March. I'll be conducting a little... field research :-) You can infer whatever you like people. Whatever you like. I've got about a perma-smile on my face every time i think about heading back to Amsterdam! Giddy giddy up.

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