Nickname 

~ Clarissa

“What’s her name?” the daycare director asks.

“Klara.”

“Erm. . . Clai-rah? Clea. . .” the director struggles. “Does she have a nickname?” she finally asks hopefully. 

“Yes,” I say. “We call her Medvezhatka.”

The light goes out of the poor woman’s eyes.

“Clea-reh. . . Clay-reh. . .” she chants hopelessly. 

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Published by Clarissa

18 thoughts on “Nickname ”

  1. Wait, how difficult are two syllables? (I know, I know. People mess up the two syllable version of my name which I trot out instead of the four syllable full first name. Starbucks:”Your name? What? How do you spell that?” “[Drink name!”].)

    And what does Medvezhatka mean? 🙂

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    1. I have no idea why it’s turning out that nobody can pronounce Klara. I don’t know what name is could have chosen to make it easier for people.

      Let’s see if Cliff Arroyo comes by and deciphers Medvezhatka. 🙂 It’s not a real word but it has a clear meaning.

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      2. I was going to say bear cub (female).

        Interestingly, there’s an idea that early Indo-Europeans in Northern Europe were not only afraid of bears but avoided the word itself (the-animal-who-must-not-be-named) so that modern Germanic and Slavic words for bear are euphemisms.

        The Germanic words are related to “the brown one” bear, bjørn, Bär, beer etc
        Slavic words are either honey-eater or honey-knower (the roots are similar) medved’, medvěd etc though Polish changed the first m into n niedźwiedź and Ukrainian reverses the order vedmid’

        I was expecting Klara might be something like ёжка … or belka….

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        1. We discovered she was a little bear right after she was born. And not only because she looks extremely Russian. 🙂 But it becomes clear she’s a total medvezhatka after you spend 5 minutes with her. ☺

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  3. Maybe it’s a generational thing? When I was growing up it was not an exotic name at all.

    There was the Clara Ward Singers (a famous gospel group)

    Here they are (rocking amazingly huge wigs)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrckHdo5YMM

    And there was Aunt Clara on Bewitched (an aging witch with a sweet disposition and a muddled brain – she carried around a bag od doorknobs and her spells usually didn’t work very well).

    There were probably others though those are the first two that came to mind.

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  4. Going back a little in time there was also Clara Bow (The “It” girl from silent movies)

    And there was also a Blues singer Clara Smith (no relation to Bessie or Mamie)

    Here, she asks the musical question “It’s tight like that!”

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  6. Maybe help out a bit? Something like how the “ar” is like it is in “Mars?” That’s the only way I can think of to help the lady. At least, I think that’s how you said it was pronounced.

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  7. “But it becomes clear she’s a total medvezhatka after you spend 5 minutes with her”

    Part of my odder-than-usual childhood was the….. broad variety of people my parents knew. One was actually a circus lion trainer. On one occasion there was discussion about the different temprement of different big cats (tigers vs lions). IIRC lions are generally not as…. confrontational as tigers which is actually more dangerous over the long term.

    Anyhoo, his son was a bear trainer for a time and said that bears were far more dangerous to trainers than either lions or tigers.

    I hope you’ve warned the day care workers to not turn their backs….

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  8. My German Aunt Klara was pronounced Klaire-ee…but I still don’t see any way that you could pronounce your daughter’s name that would be THAT HARD.
    kLAH-RAH? I can still do it
    Claire-ah? Yep, still manageable

    wow

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      1. “It’s two royal ahs like in Ahmed. Honestly not that hard.”

        Yeah…..uhmmmmmm….. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. KLAH-Rah (spanish a’s and an American r in the middle) is kind of awkward and really runs against the phonotactics of American English.

        Ending a word with an unstressed -ah is really hard. It turns into a schwa.

        I think maybe a good mnemonic device might be “Klara. It rhymes with tiara.” You’re close enough to the south that everyone should be familiar with tiaras and that’s the closest to a word ending in -AH-Rah that I can think of.

        http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/tiara?q=tiara

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