Blog Post 2: What's in a name?

What's in a name?

Names happen to mean everything to me, but that doesn't mean it is true for everyone else.  My name, especially my last name, shows where I come from and what group I can be labeled in.   I claim my name, and accept that it will always apart of me, so why would I try to change it?  In Croatia, and a lot of European countries, traditionally, middle names are rare.  When I get married, I will take my last name as my middle name and that way it will always be a prominent part in my name.  I come from Croatia, and my name is Czech, so it may contain an upside down carrot-like accent top that people don't know about, called a "caron". My last name is Čermin, and the accent above the C is very important in Czech, Serbian, and Croatian.

Americans tend to shorten words to make it easier for themselves, as we see with "refrigerator" moving to just "fridge."  We also can see how words can be pronounced drastically differently, such as how "colonel" is actually pronounced "ker-nel".  My father, upon immigrating to America from Croatia, decided to change the pronunciation from Čermin (Ch-ar-min) to Cermin (Ser-min), so Americans could pronounce it better. That little change takes away the whole purpose of the accent on top of the C, but I'll survive because it is small in the grand scheme of fitting into American societies.  Not many people in the western side of the world even know what that little caron on top of the C would mean, so it makes life a little easier since Americans can actually pronounce my name right (though, ironically, they still have a trouble in just pronouncing Cermin). 

Anna Quindlen's quote is an absolutely amazing idea on how we can be two things at once, and I agree with her thought completely.  By everyone having last names in the world, except technically not for the royal family (Prince William, Princess Diana, etc), everyone is claimed by a group or family forever. They can tie themselves to a person in history, or a certain important lineage. A last name is a window into the past, a secret only a certain sector knows.  However, everyone is so focused on being independent and being their own individual with their own freedoms at the same time.  How can one be two things at once and be socially accepted?  I believe in a balance of opposites in life and that everyone should be independent but always be able to fall back to their families or even their culture.  In the end, everyone should accept who they are, and incorporate that into their future.  If they aren't proud of their family or culture, they should replace that bad connotation with their name and turn it into something that they can be proud of.  Everything is about the balance of opposites in the grand scheme of things.