Life With Umlauts, Part 2

The second reason for the name of our blog relates to the spelling of our last name. Yes, the one that most Americans have never been able to say or spell correctly. Grabber, Gruber, Graeeeber? How do you spell that? G-R-A-E-as-in-elephant-B-as-in-boy-E-as-in-elephant-R. Yes sir, correct, there’s an E after the A. As you can imagine, it's a frustrating exercise to conduct with other people, and I can only speculate why my great-grandparents probably decided to Americanize our original name, Gräber, from the German. Maybe that first generation of Graebers found those repeated looks of consternation so tiresome that they finally decided to spare their descendants the frustration of explaining the umlaut in a land where they don’t exist. Unfortunately for us, the switch from ä to "ae" just hasn’t worked out either.

Hence, the second reason for our blog title. Gräber auf Deutsch is the plural of “grave” or “tomb,” and I’m told by my father and other older relatives that ours was a family of grave-diggers near the small town of Dielingen. Not the most flattering of Familiennamen, but I’m quite confident that my forefathers were the best grave-diggers in the old country. Anyway, after three weeks in Deutschland I’ve seen my last name Gräber several times and even met someone with the similar name Teichgräber. I’ve even received several letters and emails addressed to Sehr geehter Herr Gräber. Most profoundly, I can avoid the whole spelling rigamarole because no one misspells or mispronounces my name here.

Though clearly a different experience from home, strangely enough, it’s this last point that helps me feel as though I belong. And in the end, that's what I hope living with umlauts is all about.