What's in a Name?

Once a wise person told me: When you introduce yourself, it's your responsibility to help the other remember your name.

I took that too heart, and when I remember, I try to tell a little story when introducing myself.

So here goes, so you don't forget:

My first name; Dag is a typical norwegian name, much like John or Dave is in North America. Dag means day in common norwegian language-, so my name would be 'Day' if translated to english. The norwegian pronunciation is more like Daag and to most english speakers it sounds like 'dog'. So when I came back to Canada as a young adult, I Canadian-ized the pronunciation to avoid the snickers and "woof woof's" behind my back.

At the time of my birth my parents were impressed by the then very popular Swedish Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, and so I was named Dag, a fact that I'm still pleased about today.

As the story is told one of my great grandfathers, (or great-great-great grandfathers, I'm not sure) was a restless soul, and went travelling from his home in Norway to other parts of northern europe. On his travels he took up Falconry and became known for that. He then added "Falch" to his last name and since then my family have been the Falch-Nielsen's.

My experience was that 'Falch' was near impossible for people to guess how to pronounce, so being an independent individual, I legally changed it to 'Falck' and dropped the Nielsen altogether (after my kids were born, so I passed on the legacy of Falch-Nielsen to future generations). However as it happened, my ploy failed, and Falck is equally hard to guess how to pronounce :( just can't win eh!

So remember I am Dag, (not the dog) and Falck like the falcon.

If that doesn't stick, and you are old enough, you may want to know that I really liked the TV show Columbo, and my last name is pronounced exactly like that of the actor Peter Falk....

..... oh and just one last tidbit - my middle name Erling came from my grandfather and the meaning is close to 'ernest'.