Cuban names: Please call me... Canned Meat

Cuban names: Please call me... Canned Meat
By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Cuba

In many Latin American countries, traditional names like Jose or Isabel
remain popular, but in Cuba anything goes. Parents just love to experiment.

As a journalist in Cuba, posing certain questions can be tricky, but I
never thought asking a person's name would be one of them. My problem
is, I hardly ever understand the response. And it is not just because I
am English. My Cuban colleagues are often just as baffled.

It turns out it is rare to encounter a simple Maria or a Miguel these
days - instead, parents choosing a baby's name like to let their
imagination run wild.

"You should talk to her," the headmistress laughs, when I wander into a
local primary school and tell her I am curious about Cuban names. It is
time to go home and children are charging out of the former Spanish
mansion, pinafores akimbo and neckerchiefs flying.

The head points across the courtyard to a young teacher perched on a
child's stool. Her name, she says, is Daneisys.

"Oh. Sorry. How do you spell that?" I am forced to ask, and she tells me
- no doubt well-practised. "It is a combination of my parents' names.
They are Daniel and Deisy, so that makes me Daneisys."

There is one pupil in her class called Oldanier - that is her father's
name, Reinaldo, in reverse. Another - Zulkary - was named after the star
of a long-forgotten foreign soap opera.

It is all getting too much for some. Amongst the statistics, stories
about vegetable crops, and baseball scores in Cuba's youth paper, I
recently came across an interview with an academic. She was calling on
hospital staff to "guide" parents better when naming their newborns,
warning that saddling children with a name they are constantly forced to
explain risks causing what she called "moral damage".

Immediately after the 1959 revolution there was a surge in the number of
Fidels, Rauls and Ernestos.

Cuban originals

Usnavi - US Navy
Noslenis - Nelson backwards, plus I and S
Yaniel - Daniel... but with a Y
Oldanier - Reinaldo backwards
Dayesi - Yes in Russian (da), English (yes) and Spanish (si)
Meylin - brand of canned meat

But in the 1970s, imaginations really began to fly. That's when the
letter Y, rarely used in Spanish names, became a hit with parents
competing for ever more exotic sounding creations - Yulieski, Yumilis,
Yaraleidis. Even so-called normal names were hijacked. Daniel became Yaniel.

It was an intriguing drive to be different in a country where the state
controlled everything from education to diet.

Perhaps it was a small assertion of autonomy, or an attempt to cling to
some Caribbean colour in an increasingly uniform, communist world.

But one elderly writer I meet sees it as a positive trend. "It was about
being original, to match the times," Jaime Sarusky assures me,
surrounded by huge piles of sun-stained old books in his flat in the
once-smart neighbourhood of Vedado.

The fashion for names with a "Y" faded over the years, but other trends
have followed. "There was Dansisy, for instance," Mr Sarusky recalls,
dating from the era of distorted foreign words. "That meant they could
dance well. Then there was Dayesi: that is Yes in three languages."

However wild the choices, no-one remembers any interference by the
authorities. And as for any "moral damage" now, it seems it is not the
pupils who are suffering.

"It is really complicated when you first get the list of names for your
class," the young teacher, Daneisys, admits. "You do not always know
which are boys and which are girls and then getting the spelling right
is a nightmare."

Around the corner from her school, local residents hover in the doorways
of their crumbling Old Havana homes, gossiping and crowd-gazing in the
hot afternoon sun.

"Eddimary! Come back here," a mother shouts after a little girl who has
run off, clutching a paper cone of sugary pastry. At least no other
child looks round.
School children chat in the playground at a school in Havana Learning
names can be a struggle for teachers

Further on, I meet one man called Pablo and one Ernesto - complete with
an Ernesto "Che" Guevara tattoo on his forearm. But such orthodox
choices are definitely in the minority now.

"There are people here named after ships that have visited Cuba," a
young woman called Yamileisis tells me, approvingly. Usnavi - from US
Navy - is the most famous.

And then I meet Noslenis. "It is Nelson - my Dad's name - backwards,"
she explains, at my raised eyebrows.

"I do not think that is strange," her mother shrugs and I turn, hoping
for enlightenment at last. "My own name is Meylin," she says. "My mother
named me after the canned meat we Cubans used to get on our ration card."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18270547