Whenever you move somewhere new, you expect some logistical hiccups and challenges. But within our first few weeks in Switzerland, I came to realize that I was facing something of an existential crisis partially of my own making.
It had to do with the two dots above the second “u” in my last name. (It’s formally Austermühle.) I never gave those dots much thought. The umlaut above vowels creates wholly separate letters and sounds; spelled out in my last name, the ü approximates “ue.”
But given that it doesn’t have much use in English, I never put the umlaut to use. At best, it seemed like a Germanic linguistic decoration of little consequence. But the past few weeks have made me realize that those two discrete little dots are critical, the difference between being officially recognized as me in Switzerland, or a wholly different person. With the umlaut, I’m me; without it, my last name could well be someone else’s.
I should have known this was coming, I suppose.
A few years ago, I went to the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C. to formally register my children and get them their Swiss passports. I duly filed the paperwork, and waited, and waited, and waited some more. Months later, nothing. Still more months, still nothing. Finally, a consular official told me she had uncovered the bureaucratic hiccup: I hadn’t included the umlaut in their last names, which meant that it wasn’t matching my last name in the Swiss system, which had the umlaut. In effect, someone thought my kids might not actually be mine, since we didn’t formally share a last name. So we settled it formally: I signed paperwork removing the umlauts from their last names, since I figured, “When are they actually going to use these?” (I clearly wasn’t predicting a future move to Switzerland.)
This isn’t distinct to me, or to being Swiss. In all my years living in the U.S., I recall coming a cross plenty of Latinos with the last name of “Pena.” Now, that could certainly be their last name, but in many cases, it was actually “Peña,” though they had opted to do away with the “ñ” because it was simply too complicated for some American bureaucratic and business practices, or wouldn’t be pronounced correctly by many people anyhow. (Some German companies have dropped their own umlauts to make their products more easily findable by American and Chinese consumers.)
Additionally, there’s a long history of immigrants in plenty of places adjusting the spelling of their names to fit in with the local language. If you go far back enough, there’s generations of Austermühle immigrants to the U.S. who not only dumped the umlaut, but also changed their last names to be easier to pronounce and, well, to sound less “foreign.” (I’ve seen Austen and Austermiller, among other variants.)
Now I’m doing all of this in reverse.
I’m reintegrating into the country of my birth, so the umlaut I never really used before in the U.S. is suddenly becoming something I have to remember to include every day. And it’s even more critical that I use it consistently because it’s on my passport; how you write your name has to match how it looks on official documents, I’ve been sternly reminded.
All of this is part of the crash course in Swiss ways we’ve been undergoing over the last two weeks.
Obviously, we expected there would be lots of changes, big and small. (I never expected I would need search and rescue insurance, for one; with all the mountains in the country, having it is a must, I was informed.) But I underestimated how deeply you internalize how things work after you’ve lived somewhere for long enough; even if things didn’t work very well in D.C., I knew exactly how they didn’t work, so I could make your way around them. You also forget how deeply you embed yourself into a particular place or specific habits, and yanking those roots out is painful and often incomplete. (I spent way too long finding workarounds for the two-factor authentication and identity verification that was conducted via text messages to a U.S.-based phone number I can’t use anymore.)
I’m not just dealing with a whole new set of logistical and practical realities and requirements in Switzerland, but also the different languages and cultures that undergird them. And it makes me feel like a total amateur most of the time.
Thankfully, I have very helpful relatives here who have gone out of their way to explain the processes and start walking us through them. Additionally, many Swiss officials I’ve come across have been marginally forgiving, or at least mildly amused by the presence of a Swiss person who doesn’t speak any of the four official languages trying to navigate what in some cases can be an unforgiving bureaucracy. I’ve been stopped by many a well-meaning bureaucrat or company representative in recent days who’ve asked, “Did you mean to use the ü?”
In one interesting case in the U.S., residents of the town of Lindström, Minnesota were none too pleased when the umlaut was removed from road signs; it was eventually added back in after some mild outrage. In another case, a German hockey player in the U.S. opted to have his umlaut used on his jersey, which hadn’t been allowed in the past. (I’m certainly no pro hockey player, but hey, I’ll take the comparison!)
For now, I just need to get into the habit of using the umlaut, for fear of not being recognized as myself. And, in reversing course from what we did in Washington, I need to get the kids their umlauts back. Those two dots won’t exactly make us much more Swiss, but without them, doing what we need to do to start being more Swiss will certainly be made much more challenging.
I want to be me, and that starts with ü.
I chuckled when you mentioned Lindström. I grew up about 20 miles from there in Minnesota, and it was one of my earliest exposures to Swedish orthography. And I support u with ü!
What an endearing bureaucratic headache! Who knew so much hinged on two little dots.