I am? I am! I AMsterdam!

My name is Dutch. Let’s build a windmill and a dyke, good old fashioned Dutch. Not just my surname, completely by accident my first name is as well. My mother claims they made it up, since she loved the song Angie by the Rolling Stones but heard it as Anjel (Ahn-jel) and could not pronounce the other. My father and his family are about as Dutch as they are Kenyan or Chinese, so there wasn’t an intentional ancestral naming from that side. Therefore, I am forced to believe my mother’s story. My name is 100% Dutch by complete accident.

When we checked into the house boat, and I gave my name for the reservation, the woman looked up at me over her glasses, pronounced my entire name in Dutch (dare I say, correctly) and said, “But this is a Dutch name, how did you get a Dutch name?” I replied with the obvious and unenlightening, “Uh, from my father.” I should have been more honest and said, “I have no idea. Isn’t it hilarious?”

Later, at the second hotel we stayed at, when we asked for our rooms keys which reception kindly holds for you while you are off adventuring, they said, “Uh, but…the reservation is under a Dutch name?”

Apparently, so I learned from a South African guy in Dublin, my name is also very South African. In fact, earlier on the trip we had met a South African couple with very Dutch names walking the Dingle Way. It’s hard to explain the feeling of suddenly realizing I have two alternate identities to choose from, on paper anyway. Oh, the possibilities.

I have always had a “different” name, always having it misspelled and mispronounced at every turn. I have never met a stranger with either the same first or last name as myself, and have always thought of my name as unique and MINE. More than that, I have never in my life had the pronunciation of my own name corrected for me or had my name fit naturally into a country when I so obviously do not. Talk about developing identity issues…heh.

Anjel Van Slyke, more Dutch than ever!