Comment tu t'appelle?

George: What is Holland?
Jerry: What do you mean what is it? It's a country, right next to Belgium.
George: No, that's the Netherlands.
Jerry: Holland is the Netherlands.
George: Then who are the Dutch??

I thought it would be ignorant to fly to Amsterdam without clarifying this issue so, after skimming the relevant Wikipedia article, I decided that I would henceforth refer to the country as its given name, The Netherlands. By the end of the trip I had reversed this position –the final vote tallied being cast by the Dutch spin-off of “America’s Got Talent”, which, as you might have guessed, is titled “Holland’s Got Talent.” I knew ahead of time that my family in Nijmegen, an eastern municipality bordering Germany, referred to the country as Holland, but soon learned that this sentiment is shared almost universally amongst the locals when referring to their home. This may not be technically correct, but, in my opinion, you can call yourself whatever you want to and that’s fine by me.

For example, my last name is Guez and so is my father’s. It’s spelled with a “U” because, along with Arabic, they speak French in Tunisia where he grew up, a language which pronounces “Gez” as “Jez.” Conversely, “Guez” has a hard G like “Guess” or “Rodriguez.” His father’s last name, however, was Elguez. My father dropped the “El” when he moved to Israel. I’m not entirely sure about this, but I feel like he’s told me a different reason for the change every time I’ve asked him. He also changed his first name from Masseoud to Moshe so, in the end, I suspect that it was because Elguez sounded too Arabic. Similarly, upon taking up a career in the Israeli Army, one of his brothers Jew-ified his last name, as was the custom in career soldiers, to Gazit, while conversely the other brother kept the original and, upon immigrating to Canada, dropped the “U”. Three brothers, three names: Guez, Gazit, and Elgez.

But wait, there’s more. Though technically my cousin, my uncle in Holland was adopted by our grandmother after his biological mother, my dad’s older sister, passed away when he was still a baby. He was raised as my father’s youngest brother, a fact he didn’t discover was untrue until the age of 8. He went through his youth as an Elguez/Guez only to find, upon joining the Israeli Army, that his last name was Maimon, the surname of his biological father, which coincidentally happens to be my grandmother’s maiden name. He also found out that his first name was different, a family name that never stuck, though that was easy enough to change. Upon marrying a Dutch woman and immigrating to Holland he to simplified (Dutchitfied?) it further to Mimon.

So who am I to call foul? In both French and Hebrew the way you ask for someone's name is to say the literal translation of "How do you call yourself?"  As far as I’m concerned, when looking across paternal cousins, I’m a Guez, she’s a Gazit, he’s an Elgez, she’s a Mimon, and all our fathers our brothers. And if they want to call it Holland then, by golly, so be it.