A Spaniard By Any Other Name

One of my favorite parts of Spanish culture is the unique names. Perhaps not unique in their content so much as the combination of different common components at tortuous length. I offer as a prime example the name of the plaza that I look out over from my apartment window: Plaza de Santa Maria Soledad Torres Acosta. Given, the title of "plaza" and the namesakes saintliness inflate the length a little, but I have had students with names almost as long, such as Jose Miguel Ignacio de la Torre Reyes (altered slightly to protect the innocent). Imagine having to sign that on all your important documents. A couple of my business students have even truncated their names to make it easier for English speaking foreigners to remember.

As for myself, I have taken to christening my students with nicknames to make it easier to remember them and easier to discuss them with other teachers. I have to add the disclaimer that I don't do this to be disrespectful... I love my students. I usually pick their favorite word in English as the basis for the moniker and then that becomes their alias. My first example is a student that was much more intelligent than he initially portrayed himself to be. At first I thought that he was a very low level beginner because he had trouble understanding even the most basic questions.

Me: What is this? [speaking very slowly, pointing to a television]
Jorge: Huh?
Me: What... is... this? [I can't speak any slower or more clearly]
Jorge: Huh?
Me: What is this? [I point to a Pokemon poster on his wall featuring some sort of reptilian creature]
Jorge: That's Charizard, he is my favorite Pokemon because he is a dragon.
end scene


So little Jorge ended up with the nickname Jorge "huh." If I wasn't talking about something he liked, he absolutely did not give a shit about what I was saying and demonstrated this by responding to anything, either question or statement, with his nickname.

I recently ended classes with a student who was quite similar. He was a twelve year old named Gustavo and his last teacher was a friend of mine from the certification course I took when I first arrived here. After my first class with this student, I was convinced that my colleague had simply sat him in front of cartoons for eight months and made no attempt whatsoever to actually teach him. To keep things regular with my students, I always ask similar questions when I first arrive in class as a warm-up. What did you do this weekend? What did you do at school? Unerringly he would answer "Play fútbol." At first I just thought that he was just a soccer aficionado, but when I came back from Christmas and changed my routine slightly I realized that he was just feeding me bullshit.

Me: Hello, Gustavo! What did you get for Christmas?
Gustavo: Uhh..... Play fútbol.
Me under my breath: son of a bitch.
end scene


Guess what Gustavo got as a nickname. The reason I ended class with him was that he was accepted into a bilingual school.

One of my best students, at least the one that has improved the most, is a man named Pedro whom I teach on his lunch break. I tell this tale because it illustrates how casually Spaniards drop obscenity into their conversation. A lot of the time it is as if they don't really understand the gravity of cursing in English. Joder (ho-DAIR) is a pretty common utterance in a conversation with a Spaniard and it is the equivalent to our "fuck." Only, it isn't quite as heavy as it is in English. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to hear a priest drop the J-bomb with the way it gets bandied about over here.

He says it about almost everything. Even the most inconsequential happenings. If our meeting room gets changed: "FUCK!" If he misses one answer on an exercise: "FUCK!" I almost want to tell him that it's a pretty heavy hitter in the world of taboo words, but it's just too funny for now. Maybe on our last day of class I'll clue him in. The other day we were discussing the media and he emitted one of my favorite quotes of all time: "TV is... TV is a FUCK!" That it is, Pedro... that it is.

Again, guess what I call him.

In the end, I think it's a good thing that Spanish people have such unique and long names. That way there is something to call out when you are looking for a blind date in a crowd like this:

Find the tall, thin, attractive one with black hair and brown eyes.