Monday, November 26, 2007

What’s in a name?

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink scored for Celtic on the weekend. My reaction was, Wow, what a fantastic name. So I did a bit of research (quiet weekend visiting friends).

His name - one of the longest in European football - derives from the 17th century, when two farming families in Netherlands intermarried. Both the Vennegoor and Hesselink names carried equal social weight, and so rather than choose between them they chose to use both. "Of" in Dutch translates to "or" in English, which would mean that a strict translation of his name would read “Jan Vennegoor or Hesselink”'. So effectively he’s got a double-barrel surname.

And there was me thinking that Celtic had a part-time baron or duke playing for them.

No comments: