At the age of 16 I spent part of the summer in Lyon, France. I had completed exactly 8 months of studying French prior to my arrival, and I sounded like it. In an effort to help me acclimate to my lovely surroundings, Renault decided to name one of its models le Megane. Ever since I learned of this, I've had a great, cheeky introduction for myself in every somewhat-semi-pseudo Francophone country I have subsequently visited. Je m'appelle Megan, comme la voiture. Boof, ha, ha, ha, Megane,like the car! I admit, it is an odd association to encourage people to make. Plus what if people are thinking of the Megane hatchback instead of the fashionable coupe cabriolet? Well in Tunis the Megane is alive and well and one can be found in a variety of incarnations on nearly every street. I look for them, so I know. Seeing (almost) my name printed on a car gives me warm fuzzies; it's like a little welcome back sign to a place I'd never previously been! Also it's convenient because no one forgets my name. On the other hand Renault also named a car Twingo, so maybe I should stop associating myself with them.
I appreciate Le Megane because my name sounds familiar to people when it would otherwise not. When traveling one usually expects that no one will be able to pronounce your name, so it is pleasant when the opposite is true. Yet, while we don't expect people to sound the same, dress the same, or have the same opinions on personal hygiene, we make all sorts of assumptions about how people think. And we rarely realize we are doing this. For example, I had never considered that people count the continents differently. This week there was a not quite heated, yet not at all dispassionate discussion in my Arabic class on the number of continents. The Italians and Spanish say America is one continent and Australia is part of the continent of Oceania, and is not at all a continent itself. The Japanese and Rwanda girls says no, America is two, north and south (which is certainly what I learned in grade school). Yet the Japanese girls puts Europe and Asia together into Eurasia, which makes sense, they are connected. The Europeans were having none of this connecting Europe and Asia business and they insisted that America is one continent. Having never considered it before, I arrived at the conclusion that you can count the continents as you want, but be consistent with how you draw the distinctions. If you divide the Americas into two then it makes since to divide Europe and Asia. If the Americas are one, why are you diving Europe from Russia, because of some mountains? C'mon, have you ever seen how skinny Panama looks on a map? Plus didn't we dig a hole in it and so actually there's a crack, and the two land masses are in fact divided? Yeah, but it's still pretty connected. Isn't Europe and Russia? Well, this is where the conversation went, no where.
Five continents, six, seven, whatever, why the fuss? No one seemed willing, or able to go "oh I see how some people could count Asia and Europe as part of one continent. I never thought of it before." Or "Oh, Oceania instead of Australia, yeah that makes sense, where else would all those islands go?" There was a lot of stubborn, unwillingness to consider another point of view. I guess it remains true that the naming things is very important to us. We take certain pleasure in naming and categorizing the world around us. It gives us some since of control and order. Even in class, once I know what to call something in Arabic, I have power over the word, I've named it and I feel a sense of ownership. Mustaqbil, you are mine! Apparently we feel similarly when things are named after us. I would be crushed if all the Meganes were suddenly changed to Twingos.
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