Yesterday, I interviewed a Finnish wind energy expert who gave me the name of another expert to talk to, this guy a Swedish one.
Nothing special, at all, you’re right. I made a note of the email with the guy’s contact info, but not much more. Today, I copied his email address off the email, typed a message and sent it off. Another day at the office, another interview booked. Five minutes later, I got an error message about the message being undeliverable so I had to send the message again. And because the address was wrong, I had to edit it.
That’s when I saw the name. Really saw the name.
I double checked the email where I had got the name from, and checked the address I had sent my email to. The name was on the email twice, both times spelled the same way, so it had to be correct. I changed the “dot se” to “dot com”, and off it went. Delivered, too.
To Mr Stalin.
Apparently, there are 53 people with that last name in Sweden.
That reminded me of what may be a Swedish urban legend: that nobody’s named their child “Adolf” since about 1945. Not sure, according to Statistics Sweden, there are 320 men by that first name (and 3790 men who have Adolf as one of their first names) in Sweden.
No women Adolfs.
It may take one more generation for Adolf to make a big comeback.
And no, my Mr Stalin’s first name wasn’t Joseph.
and now that you came up with the name stalin, i must admit it would be very fascinating to know about the other last name’s presence nowadays – i mean the h guy.
You meet people now and then in Hong Kong who have taken Hitler as their English (Austrian!) given name, e.g. Hitler Wong.
The pronounciation of the Swedish version of Stalin is so different from the Josef one (emphasis on the "i" – Stuh-leen), so I have actually never thought of it as being the same name!
A few days ago, I got an e-mail from a Sarah Palin. Pronounced in the same way, of course. "Puhleene"