I recently stumbled across one of Sra Brady’s old history schoolbooks and was a bit confused by the repeated references to the meddlesome US president Thomas. Who was President Thomas? Come to find out, Woodrow T. Wilson’s middle name was Thomas, and here in Mexico the penultimate surname is dominant. I suppose the next volume deals with all the German generals named Von, and how Chairman Tse (or Ze?) drove General Kai out of mainland China. Back where I’m from, names generally consist of two parts, first and last, one long, one short, with a middle name thrown in for assassins and good old southern boys. Here in Mazatlán they like to spend more time lingering over each other’s name. A guy who in Boise would be called Joe, down here is called José Luis or José Alfredo. Next comes the paternal surname. Then they add the mother’s maiden name at the end of it all to make it an even dozen syllables. This terminological discrepancy threw me for a loop when I tried to receive some money by wire. Of course the sender must fill out all the blank spaces in the form, including mother’s maiden name. Since the sender was my mother, and she remembered it, this was not a problem. At least, not until I tried to collect the money using American ID. It was all worked out fine in a matter

of days, no real harm done, but it makes me wonder what kind of snafus the future might hold for our children. Somehow, they each ended up with a different last name on their government papers. One is D.G. Brady Lamas, while the other is S.E. Brady. If you get them mixed up, they won’t let you on the plane. Or worse yet, they won’t let you off. Actually, there are enviable aspects to Mexican nomenclature. For example, here they clearly and respectfully differentiate between common names and family names. A Mexican child does not receive a given name that is actually a distinguished surname like Juarez or Lopez or Ponce de Leon, while up north it’s become almost normal to name your kid after a president such as Harrison, Tyler, Jackson, Truman, Clinton, Pierce, Carter, Jefferson or Grant. Or Thomas. Or Wilson. Even non-presidential surnames like Brady and Murphy are fair game. It must make international diplomatic protocol at Foreign Service cocktail parties a nightmare, everybody reading name tags in the wrong order, calling each other by the wrong title and getting offended. Maybe someday our presidents Walker and Quesada will sort it all out, like they did with the metric system, but meanwhile we’ll just have to muddle along as best we can. eg@pacificpearl.com