My last name is a difficult one, for a number of reasons.
1. It’s long.
2. It’s French.
3. And it’s pronounced nothing like the way it looks:
Carcanague.
During my years as a student, only two teachers pronounced it correctly the first time. There are more teachers who never pronounced it correctly the entire time I was in their class.
My father encountered similar situations growing up, so when I left my fifth grade Sunday School class one morning, he broached the subject of cruel nicknames, so that I might understand how kids look for ways to pick on other kids, and kids would use my last name to do so.
I don’t think my father remembered anything about the conversation that morning, but it remains etched into my memory even today.
He said to me, “Son, our name is a difficult one to pronounce, and other kids will make fun of it. When I was growing up, I was called ‘Crack-an-egg’, ‘Carton-of-eggs’, and ‘Crocodile.
“But remember: Be proud of your name. Be proud of being French.”
I can’t remember if these were his exact words, but it’s close. And it worked.
During my middle school years, Napoleon was my hero. Forget for a moment that some have interpreted the predictions of Nostradamus to have him as the First Antichrist, or that he isn’t even French (he’s Corsican/Italian). He was the most successful Frenchman I knew, and I was proud of him and being French, even if I couldn’t speak the language.
The funny thing is, during all of my time in middle school, high school, and even college, no one ever came up with nicknames similar to my father’s which he endured in school.
In eighth grade, my health teacher called me ‘Carcinogen‘, which means “cancer-causing”. I responded by calling him Happy-Pappy, instead of Mr. Pappenburg. He was not amused, and grabbed me around the throat one day in the hallway, and ordered me to stop calling him that.
I guess teachers could do those things back in the day.
I did get the last laugh there, however. No one besides him ever called me that…but four years later, I heard my stepbrother and his friends calling him that. The nickname had stuck.
By that time, I had been given another nickname, one that has stuck with me until today.
On the first day of my high school career, all the teachers read the rosters of their classes to identify the students.
They all failed in the pronunciation of my name. I heard ‘Car-CAN-uh-goo’, ‘CAR-cun-uh-goo’, and the like. And each time I corrected them: “It’s ‘CAR-can-egg’”. “CAR-can-egg.” “CAR-CAN-EGG!!”
A 15 year-old, 6’1” student with a full beard sat in front of me in almost every class. I was 4’11” my first day of high school, 13 years old, and had no facial hair.
He scared me.
In 7th period, he once again sat in front of me, and another teacher mispronounced my name. Grizzly Junior turned to me from the seat in front of me, spit chewing tobacco into his cup, and said:
“Shorten it to Gue (Goo).”
I was in no position to argue.
For the rest of that year, Grizzly Junior called me Gue, and other students began to pick up on it. The following year, my sophomore year, my English teacher was told of my nickname at the beginning of the year, and began to call me it as well. Since he was one of the “cool” teachers, it stuck:
I was Gue.
Except for my college years, most of my friends have known me as Gue, or The Gue (I guess that’s a sign of respect). What’s more humorous is that certain spouses and parents of my friends didn’t even know my name was anything else other than “The Gue”. Just last weekend, I attended a memorial service for a high school friend’s younger sister. I hadn’t seen their mother in 28 years.
“Hi, Mrs. Campbell. I’m Marc Carcanague, remember me?”
85 year-old Mrs. Campbell struggled for a bit. “I don’t recognize the face with the mask on…” I took it off.
“Oh! THE GUE!!!”
As for the origin of my last name, the pride (and bullshit) that is my family had me believing for years we were well-to-do Frenchmen who fled from Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. After further inquiry (when I was in my twenties), I was told that we were named after a bend in the Carcan River, just outside Bordeaux, and nowhere near Alsace-Lorraine. That turned out to be false as well.
In 1998, I was contacted by a woman in France with the same surname. She asked, in an e-mail using elementary English, if we were related. Relying on my aunt’s research, I compared the history of the American Carcanagues to Sandie’s family. Without traveling to France and doing research myself, Sandie’s family and my own lived about 150 kilometers apart in 1750.
We both assumed we were related, and a couple of generations earlier our families had parted ways.
I went to visit her in 1999. It was then that I learned our family had not been middle class, nor had we been named after a bend in a river.
While having dinner with Sandie’s parents, she asked me if I knew what our last name meant. I explained my aunt’s story.
She told me my aunt was full of it, in elementary English. She left the room, and returned with an encyclopedia of last names in France.
And there it was: Carcanague. And in French, the definition:
Medieval French:
a greeting to a simpleton.
My family were peasants. Dumb peasants. And when the Lord of the Manor interrupted my ancestors from making our mudpies yelling out, “Hey you idiots! Get up here and sweep out my house!”, my family did so. And somewhere with the intelligence of a maggot, my ancestors believed “Hey, you idiot” was their family name.
My stepmother tells me this explains a lot.
In 2019, Sandie and her family came to visit my family here in the United States, and she shared with me the French version of Ancestry.com. In France, most information has been digitized and accessible. It’s brilliant – type in a surname, and a specific year, and regions of France will light up a different shade of blue to identify the number of appearances that name was found on marriage licenses, professional certifications, baptism certificates, and the like.
Sandie took me on a tour through history, starting around 1900. There were a few Carcanagues in Paris, a few more scattered across France…and each decade, less and less existed outside of Massif Central, a mountainous region in south central France. Before 1750, our name only appeared in one town: Mur-de-Barrez.
Someday, I hope to visit Mur-de-Barrez, and learn more about this unique surname, one I’ve become extremely proud of.
Especially since I received a very personal nickname at the age of 13.
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Great story!
My last name remains a mystery. We’ve heard various stories about it, one of them being that it once meant “fool,” not unlike Carcanague. Another interpretation is that it meant “From Ephesus.” Maybe both? Some Greek idiot?
It did inspire some varied attempts at teasing during my childhood, though none of those attempts actually sounded inspired until high school.
1,631.
At last count, that’s the number of times in my life that I have heard:
MT? Like “Empty? Empty in the head?” {chortle guffaw snort}
See, I just always think of the Middle Temporal area of the visual cortex:
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/the-medial-temporal-lobe-structure-and-functions.html
“With a broad stroke, one can say that the primary function of the medial temporal lobe is to store and categorize declarative memory, which includes factual knowledge and personal memory, and function as a critical stopover point before memories can be moved to our long-term memory.”
Thank you, PoA. I feel validated. And a lot better.
Sorry, as far as I know, the medial temporal lobe is not referred to as MT. The middle temporal region of the occipital lobe is, and typically only for monkeys (it’s usually called V5 in humans). 😀
Still, its function is in the processing of complex motion patterns associated with self-movement. That’s cool, right?
…
….right?
“Hi. I’m your host, V5-58.”
That will do. I’ll get to work on a new nametag.
I fear that my count is much higher. Last name – Sharp. Number of times I have heard “You’re looking SHARP today” or some variation thereof – tens of thousands. I finally started chuckling lightly and replying, “Oh, that’s funny. Can’t believe nobody else ever thought of that.” Usually this is followed by confusion and the perpetrator slinking off.
Anybody ever broke into “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” Would that be less or more irritating?
Nobody ever has. That would be different at least.
My last name is also French. It means wood. Growing up, every time we traveled as a family through Quebec and New Brunswick and we passed a pile of firewood someone was selling, my parents would have us kids sit on the pile next to the sign that said “Bois à vendre” and take a picture. They thought it was hilarious.
Fortunately, no one ever bought us.
V-dog,
Your hysterical story bring to mind two things: one, not so funny, the other a lovely French nursery song I used to play for my kids!
https://www.ranker.com/list/story-behind-photo-of-children-for-sale/1499368817867
https://youtu.be/KrLuJchq294
That’s a horrifying story. The song is lovely though.
What’s the URL of the French Ancestory site?
That story is tragic. And terrifying. And so many other things that I can’t even put into words.
So y’all retained the French pronunciation of ‘bois’ then? Not like the city of DuBois, PA that’s pronounced “Do Boys”?!
I’m afraid we got Americanized a couple generations ago, so it rhymes with “choice” but if someone pronounces it “Bwah,” I’m happy to answer to that, too. But the guy who pronounced it “Bo iss” with two syllables, what was he thinking?
Having only read your name, I have always pronounced it “Bwah” in my head. When I finally get to one of your shows, I will attempt to remember to pronounce it in your preferred fashion.
I always assumed it was pronounced “boys”… at least in Tennessee.
In Kentucky, we pronounce “Versailles” as “ver-sales”. There’s nothing that can’t be un-frankified in the South.
In Indiana, it is also “ver-sales” and Milan is “mile-un.” In Tennessee, we go one further with “Luh-fett” for Lafayette.
But, I like to think we’ll be on a first name basis!
Well, of course we will. What was I thinking?
I thought I wrote this earlier:
Have I got a story about DuBois PA! It’s too long to write here, but my friends and I attended the Philennium (02-02-02) in Punxatawney. Might have been the best weekend of my life!
You’ve got my vote for that to be your next tale, thegue!
I always thought thegue was pronouned like it would be in French, ‘teg’, as if the middle e had a grave accent. So I was not completely far off in my thinking!
I’m sure there are plenty of families with their own historical origin stories that don’t quite match reality but are passed down through the generations as truth. The kicker in your story of what your name actually means is priceless. It sounds like you’re at peace with it though.
My name is relatively uncommon but despite being nowhere near as complicated as yours I’ve still had a lifetime of mispronounciation. Its not that long and to me its quite simple but the second letter is an ‘e’ which is forever mispronounced as an ‘a’. From schoolteachers on its been a struggle. Even my aunt, my mum’s sister can’t get her head round it. As a child she got me a pen with my name inscribed on it. Except not only does she mispronounce my name she misspells it in the same way. Then there was the time she gave me a cheque for a birthday. I didn’t even realise that she hadn’t bothered putting my surname on it until I got to the bank and they wouldn’t accept it. My aunt treated it as though I was the one at fault for having a name she can’t spell. Apparently I was supposed to write my surname in myself.
I particularly ‘enjoy’ the confrontation when I correct someone and they try and correct me back as though I don’t realise that I’m the one getting it wrong. Doesn’t happen very often now I’m an adult but it was noticeable as a child / teenager that some adults liked to try and assert their authority in that way.
From an online search of my name I even found a publication from 1872 called ‘Notes & Queries – A medium of inter-communication for literary men, artists, antiquaries, genealogists etc’. In which a correspondent bemoaned the same issue as the name is all too frequently pronounced incorrectly by those not of the family. As my daughter is now learning, its never gonna change
I’m currently reading Adrian Tomine’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist. Tomine was the first graphic novelist to make the NYT Notable Books list. He got his start with Pulse. The guy is Japanese. But I didn’t see it. Until his game-changing graphic novel Shortcomings, I was pronouncing it TO-MINE, just like he relays in the autobiographical vignettes of his latest work.
I can visualize a lot of this. I can break it down into comic panels. Great storytelling, thegue.
I love reading things like this, thanks thegue, this was alot of fun. You’re like THE Ohio State University… 😁
(And I’d have never gone the gue=’goo’ pronunciation either, so I’d have screwed up pronouncing your nickname too, ha!)
My parents always intended to call me by my middle name, the whole thing just flowed better that way. I despised my first name for eons, teachers always garbled it and tried to put some weird German accent in it, and I’d sit there first day of class telling them mid-garble “[sigh] it’s X” And then they’d get even more confused wondering how X came from a Germanic garbled word. By the time I reached middle school, I simply walked in to the front office and asked them to change my name in the official records, so I was much happier until my senior year at a new school.
I eventually went the F Scott Fitzgerald route and signed everything with my first initial and then full name. I thought it seemed snooty, but it worked to balance the legal needs and my disdain. 😂
Nowadays, thankfully, I’ve grown out of that pettiness. But man does it throw me for a loop when I have to sign with my full name – I feel like I’ve just been asked to write with my left hand with a gator-hunting high wattage spotlight suddenly shone on my face.
My dad’s mom was into genealogy all the way back into the 70s with giant fan charts and old school research. Considering though that she and my grandpa were the first in their families to move away from Boston since, like, 2 boats after the Mayflower arrived, all that research was rather conveniently localized to eastern Massachusetts! Anyhoo, she and various cousins managed to trace the family back to a village in England that they took their last name from. My friends family was gracious enough to offer to drive me there on a day trip during one of my England trips in the 90s. I kept telling them not to expect much, it’s really tiny, just the church and some houses. So we get there, and my friends dad was like – you’re not kidding, there’s not even a pub here!!! So that apparently was his marker of small town vs crossroads, lol.
So I shoved my hands in the dirt at the church. Seems silly but it was kinda cool to recognize that connection.
Yeah, I’ve always mentally pronounced his name as “the gyoo” (rhymes with The View), so I’m doubly thankful he wrote this piece!
My last name is McCracken, which is easy to pronounce but also horribly easy to make fun of. (My wife’s previous husband had the surname Belcher, so she’s been “blessed” in both marriages.) Never looked too closely into the etymology of my name, but a quick search now shows that it’s an Anglicized form of the Gaelic “Mac Reachtain”, which itself is a variant of “Mac Neachtain” (comes from the Irish god of water), whose English form is McNaughton, which would’ve been a much cooler name to have IMO. But hey, you play the cards you’re dealt.
For five glorious MLB seasons, baseball fans were blessed with a Barfield and a Belcher. The Padres were blacked out from my region for a decade. I don’t follow baseball anymore.
Oh man… that reminded me of a meme from a few years back regarding a couple of West Virginia football players. I went looking for it and found this article with several examples of awesomely named teammates:
https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/9/2/12763240/football-jersey-teammate-names-samuel-l-jackson-clark-griswold-kelly-clarkson
Classic.
Great story thegue, I often wondered where the name came from!
Quick story. I was going to say quick funny story but my daughter would argue otherwise.
She married a man whose last name was Scroggin. One day, during her second pregnancy, we were discussing baby names should it turn out to be a boy. She shared that one of her fears in having a boy is that his friends might someday find their way to calling him Scrotum. Scrotum was the nick name her husband’s friends had started calling him when he was young and it stuck. As something among friends, he gave it no thought. My daughter however hated it, and would loudly silence anyone who dared use that nick name in her presence.
I told her that naming a boy after close family members would be a good choice and suggested Richard Edward. It would be a nice traditional name and that for short, there were lots of variant nick names – Rick, Rich, Richie, Dick. She absorbed the suggestion. When it hit her, she looked at me with the heat of a thousand suns and shrieked Dick Ed Scrotum!!! I was immediately tossed out of the conversation, never to return to the topic.
She did have a boy. She did not name him Richard Edward.
I laughed. Pretty hard.
Your daughter would probably never speak to me. 🤭
She actually does have a great sense of humor and reluctantly gives me credit for setting her up on this one. She laughs about it today.
I am glad that you found peace in school with your nickname, but as a teacher, your story really bothers me. There is very little that is more important to a child than being called by the right name. By high school, many have given up and allow themselves to be called by nicknames that they don’t really like because it’s easier. This is especially true of children with Hispanic or other names that are not common in the dominant culture.
Whenever a child gives me a nickname, I always ask if that is what they really prefer, or is that what they have accepted from people who can’t be bothered to learn their pronunciation. I have received so many grateful looks and replies that they really want to be called by their actual names. I invite them to keep correcting me until I get it exactly right. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes I struggle because language is not my natural gift.
But it’s always worth it to show a teenager that they are valued enough to learn how to recognize them as who they are.
I loved reading that ltc, that’s fantastic you make that effort. Never thought about it in that capacity before, how such a small gesture could go a long way.
Somehow that reminded me of how one of my best friends in elementary school was named “Jaslyn” (which I’ve always thought was a cool name). Her younger sister couldn’t pronounce it though, and wound up calling her “Jakie” (like jay-kee). Those of us who would hang out at her house in kindergarten thought this was so cool, and that became her name all the way through to graduation.
We also had a Buchart in our class, which of course became Booger. But since he was already the coolest kid in first grade, it was like a badge of honor for him to have that nickname. Probably best advice to give a kid with a potentially funny name – own it and embrace the funny; beat the bullies to the punch.
thegue. I had never heard the full story of your surname before and I’m perplexed and yet not so by your teachers failure to ask for your definition of your name before saying it before your class.
As a first year teacher in my fifties, I would ask the students to stand and pronounce their last names before I totally butchered it and left them open to ridicule. But that’s because i wasn’t in my Twenties and didn’t know better but hd been in the real world where you learned to ask first then proceed.
Having hear your whole last name, I have a new appreciation of it and hope I’m saying it the right way.
My last name is short and to the point but people still can make fun of it in nautical terms (swim and shark being the most obvious).
So here’s to all of us who’ve survived the monikers.
Did you ever find out if you were related with all these dna tests available? I took one and am waiting for results but my great great great grandfather was Jean-Gustave Carcanague from Bordeaux, France and I am trying to find out more but the censuses after they came here EVERY single one the name gets more and more misspelled.