Karolinka In & Around Bulgaria

I’ve been renamed.

It’s funny because I’ve never really had problems with my first name people read it and know it and frankly my parents planned it this way because no one ever gets my last name right on the first try. Given the name of my blog, my first name should come as no surprise: Carolyn but my last name. That’s a different story and I’ve spent my entire life correcting the pronunciation. It’s Emigh. Yes. Emigh. And it’s pronounced: Amy–just like the girl’s first name.

This forces me to spell my last name before saying it because if you say it first the results can be disastrous. So I spell it, smile and then explain how to say it and then usually end up telling people it’s Germanic (but even I can’t help but to wonder if this is actually true). Any how, you get used it it after 15+ years of first day of school role call it’s been a love/hate relationship but now at age 27 I am pretty comfortable with my name.

That is until I RSVP’d to an event in May at the Bulgarian Embassy in DC. I called gave my name spelling both my first name and my last name. The exchange left me a little disconcerted but I figured that it was fine when the caller on the other end of the line thanked me for calling to RSVP.

I showed up to the event with a friend. Only as soon as I saw the embassy, I became unexplainable nervous. It was a moment of pure and utter panic. The panic turned to fear and it spread throughout my stomach. With the embassy less than a block away, I was experiencing physically and emotionally my first taste of what I was getting myself into. A couple of deep breaths and a fake smile plastered on my face, I walked into the Bulgarian embassy to be greeted by a metal detector and a Bulgarian guard. (As a small aside, it’s probably worth noting here that I’ve been to the British Embassy, the Irish Embassy, the German Embassy and the Hungarian Embassy and have never had my bags searched or walked through a metal detector).

The guard, list in hand, looked at me and my friend, said hello and then got across in halting English can you find your names on this list? I looked at the list, still not over my earlier fear and nervousness, and realized: I can’t read this list. And my first thought was this is a joke. I blinked my eyes and the list was still in size 12 font in the Cyrillic script. Cyrillic. It was undecipherable, the foreign letters blurred on the page and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find my name on the list. And there we stood. I looked at him, he looked at me and neither of us spoke the same language. I never found my name on the list but eventually we got into the event (and I promised myself that I would start studying Bulgarian). My friend still teases me that the reason we got in is because I am tall, blond and smiled at the right people. Clearly, I am going to have to remember this technique.

A week and a half later, I was learning Bulgarian. Well really Cyrillic but I was learning. My tutor is a friend of a friend’s. She grew up in Sofia and is now working on her PhD in DC and one of her most charming characteristics is that her speech is highlighted with a light Bulgarian accent and she uses the pet names of a southern-belle. In practice this means that even when she is correcting my pronunciation, making me count to 100 or conjugate verbs (again and again), she is very nice and encouraging calling me names like sweetie-pie, honey, sugar or something equally sweet even though I know that I am doing poorly.

When I got an official letter from the Bulgarian-Fulbright Commission all in Bulgarian, I brought it in for her to help me read. She explained that I needed this letter for my visa and for entry into the country. Then she showed me my name as it appeared officially in the document: KAPOЛИH EMИΓ. She laughed and told me that this was my Bulgarian name and that everyone would pronounce my name using the Bulgarian rules for pronunciation. in this moment, I realized I had been renamed me. They had unknowingly given me the last name I had just spent the previous 26 years of my life working against…telling people nope that’s not quite right, it’s pronounced this way… It happened so quickly.

One document with the Ministry’s seal on it and I have a new name. Maybe though it’s fitting. Now I’ve got a new name for this new adventure. I am not just Carolyn Emigh instead, I am a derivative, a composite. I am Carolyn translated. It’s a good lesson–who I am and what I know cannot be directly translated. There is not a one to one equivalent. So what is in a name? I am still me but inadvertently this new name has opened a space for me in Bulgaria–a space not to become Bulgarian but rather for me to see, live and experience both the the place and culture. My tutor now calls me Karolinka (KAPOЛИHKA) and I couldn’t be happier. It makes me think that I might be able to make it and it doesn’t hurt that my Bulgarian is getting better.

Tags: Fellowship, Fulbright, Lanugage, Names