I Couldn't Have Married This Man

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Marrying a foreigner may seem adventurous to some people. Aren’t the different customs and traditions hazardous to the durability of a marriage? A glance at the divorce statistics concerning marrying a partner with the same background shows that this isn’t a guarantee for a long happily-ever-after life, either. Many mixed couples show that differences can be overcome if both sides show tolerance and good will. Yet, one issue remains tricky and possible solutions may favour one side and lead to frustration on the other. The surname! Gone are the times when a woman had to take her husband’s surname - at least in Germany, the country for which I’m speaking here. For some years, the man has been able to take the wife’s surname. Or the wife can decide on a hyphenated name. I think the man can do that, too, but I’m not sure about this. So, everything solved, no problem left. Hah! What if the man has a surname which doesn’t evoke the slightest reaction in his home country but is of the utmost silliness in the woman’s country? Introduction over. Now comes the main part. My husband’s family lives on the Italian island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea. We often drove from Florence, where my husband worked, to Civitavecchia, a city not far from Rome and harbour for the ferries to Sardinia and Corsica. We preferred the county roads to the motorway so that we could enjoy the landscape of Tuscany. I can’t say how often we drove there but I can say that I enjoyed the trip each time for a reason only someone who knows German can understand. My husband’s surname has a meaning in the dialect of Sardinia. It is the name of a plant. It is quite common and of no special interest and not a source of merriment. I was lucky. On either side of Italian country roads are billboards advertising businesses. Most of them are located in the nearest town, some can be found in the whole province. A furniture shop in Tuscany seems to belong to the second category. A short time after leaving Florence the first signs appear with the name FURZI and the Italian word for furniture. “So what?” I hear you asking. “What’s the point?” Let me enlighten you. The correct pronunciation is ‘foortsy’. For German eyes and ears this means ‘farty’. I am a teacher. Imagine I, a German woman, fell in love with a member of the Furzi family and the thought of marrying came up. For some reason it would have been clear right from the beginning that we would live in Germany. Can a teacher survive one day if she introduced herself as Mrs Farty? Would she be saved if she decided on a hyphenated surname like, say, Frau Mayer-Farty? Nothing would be gained by that. The pupils would still fall off their chairs laughing. You may think that the Italian could choose his German wife’s harmless surname Mayer. Why not? Equality and fair chances for everybody. Yes, of course, but why should he? After all, the surname Furzi is completely harmless and without any meaning in Italian and has probably been the name of the Italian furniture business for centuries. The Italian family would be enraged and the man disinherited. I have no solution for the dilemma. I hope that no German woman ever falls in love with a Signor Furzi or if she does that she can move to Italy where she won’t be the target of derision.