Return of the Revolutionaries

1,057 words

[Language] allows thousands to sin and does not prevent them. Centuries wear it down, and millions of tongues seem to talk it to death and wear it out in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, in trade and commerce, carelessly and irreverently.

Until one day, in an eloquent, fervent person of a special kind—in a Luther, a Goethe, a contemporary or a future figure—it is resurrected and sinks into the hearts of the people whose soul it serves, purer, stronger, more powerful, deeper, younger than ever before. Then it becomes clear that language is a whole. Even though it works incessantly on itself, just as it wears itself down incessantly, it nevertheless rises to its renewal as an expression of its people as a whole.

—Rudolf Binding, Vom Wunder der Sprache (my translation)

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Yes, the title of this essay is totally stolen from Walter Semkiw‘s book about what he believed was the reincarnation of key figures from the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. Whether or not he was correct is immaterial here, but I was reminded recently of a curious trend in naming children in Germany. No, I’m not talking about “Mohammed” being the most popular boy’s name in Berlin. (As well as the most common name among social welfare recipients, coincidentally.)

Names in Germany have been subject to fashion mainly since after the Second World War. Of course, there have been trends before, but for centuries, children were simply named after their parents, grandparents or godparents, which, in combination with the limited travel of ordinary folks before the invention of the railroad, led to the same names appearing generation after generation in most families.

Let’s take for example my maternal grandfather’s line. Countless generations, as far back as records allow, of the women of that line were named Barbara—because the family were Catholic miners, and Barbara was their patron saint.

Rather strangely, many men of that same line were named Nikolaus. Bishop Nikolaos of Myra is the patron saint of seamen[1] (as singer Freddy Quinn reminds us in his classic Christmas song “Sankt Niklas war ein Seemann”). I have no idea where my ancestors’ preference for that name originated; they were very much landlocked.

But then, out of the blue, a break occurred in the 1960s. All of a sudden, new names flooded the family tree with the arrival of Sabine, Silke (quintessential 60s names), or Jens.

This is cultural shift in action. Consequent decades brought their own trend names with them to a greater or lesser extent. Never out of fashion were the Nordic names, interestingly enough: Sven, Nils or Björn.

The popular names of my generation in the former states of the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany) have become legendary in their own right. They were, of course, fruits of their environment: Kevin for the boys, Michelle or Mandy for the girls— foreign names, mainly English or French, as emulations of the romanticized, exotic west; much like young West Germans in the 1950s took on English-sounding nicknames.

West Germans of my generation used to laugh at it, because it became such a cliché (“Cindy? She’s from the east, right?”), but I find the phenomenon intriguing, because it expresses a fascination with and longing for the supposed freer and better life outside the Iron Curtain.

Nowadays, ironically, many people in the former GDR have become the greatest critics of the Americanization of Germany.  However, in the 2010s, something happened. The revolutionaries returned, so to speak. The first to make a reappearance was Lina, last seen trending in my great-grandparents’ generation. It had a strong renaissance about ten, fifteen years ago. Other oldies but goldies followed. Now we have a whole new generation of young Fritzes, Theos and Emmas, which would have gotten you laughed out of town in my youth.

Another curious example of this resurrection, renaissance, return—whatever you want to call it—also appeared in my own family. My great-grandfather Mathias was born illegitimate. This was not as big a deal as you might think, because contrary to the horror stories one hears about the treatment of unmarried mothers and their children in the olden days, it was pretty common. (Or maybe my family on both sides just had loose morals. Who knows?) Anyway, because Mathias’ father (one of those Nikolauses I was talking about earlier) was not around until three months later when he married my great-great-grandmother and officially acknowledged his son, Mathias spent his early days with his maternal family and thus was named after… well, basically every male member of said family. That’s how the name Mat(t)hias migrated into his father’s family, where it had not appeared before. So there was my great-grandfather Mathias; his son, my grandfather Matthias; two of Matthias’ children, my aunt Mathilde (who, as the oldest child, was given the female version of her father’s name) and my uncle Matthias (the eldest son). And then it stopped. Until one of my cousins named her son Mads. Now, I doubt very much that she named him after our grandfather, because there’s some bad history there, but the interesting part is that one of our ancestors from our great-great-grandmother’s side had been given the nickname of Matz. My cousin hadn’t done any family research, so she didn’t know about that fact.

Something appears to be brewing. Whether we want to get literal with the idea of reincarnation, and our ancestors are indeed returning as the new generation, or whether this phenomenon is the expression of an inner, perhaps subconscious reaction to multiculturalism and the increasing loss of German heritage, a shift is definitely occurring. It makes me feel oddly hopeful.

Notes

[1] Also: “Among other things, Nikolaus is the patron saint of peoples such as Russians, Croats, and Serbs, as well as regions such as Lorraine and southern Italy. … The numerous legends led to him being chosen as the patron saint by many other groups, including professions such as sailors, inland waterway transporters, merchants, lawyers, pharmacists, butchers, and bakers, as well as grain merchants, threshers, pawnbrokers, lawyers, tailors, coopers, carters, and salt workers. Nikolaus is the patron saint of schoolchildren and students, pilgrims and travelers, lovers and women in childbirth, the elderly, altar boys and children, as well as thieves, prison guards, prostitutes, and prisoners”, as the German Wikipedia informs me.