Ancestral street names and other strange animals

E-mail is so useful in unexpected ways. A cousin by marriage on my father's side who more than dabbles in genealogy and who unlike me is a cyber genius gave me the bright idea of rounding up all the cousins whose e-mail I had and collecting information to allow for a veritable oak tree of a table to be compiled!

In Malta it is relatively easy to obtain this sort of information from the Church records that date back to about 1600. Frankly, I was not all that interested in that particular aspect but more in the present ramifications.

It is utterly amazing just how many relations one can collect in just four generations! We must breed like rabbits! When one shares the same surname, especially if it is only a 19th century one like mine which was adopted by my great-grandfather Antonio Zammit Ta' Bona (of Bona in N. Africa), it is not difficult to root out all the cousins; however, it was even more interesting tracing those descending through the female lines, some of whom I had lost all trace of!

I suppose knowing where you came from makes up for the great void; that unfathomable future which though limited on this earth is hopefully eternal some time in the future. Mors Janua Vitae! Death is the gateway to life! It is also the primary reason why we humans reproduce ourselves generation after generation in the vain hope that something of us will live on in future. How wrong we are!

I was poring over the names as we went back to the 18th and 19th centuries and that is what they remained; just names! If any of them thought that I, their descendant, would have carried any part of them into the 21st century I am afraid I must disillusion their sainted shades! In today's world of cloning and genetic engineering, there is little place for this sort of idle pastime. It is the present that is important!

Hope springs eternal! Macbeth declared "what is life but a brief tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". Eventually, should we achieve anything of note in our lifetime our names may find themselves in some historical index.

Perhaps one day when I am long dead and gone and my paintings become rare collectors' items in salerooms, they may even name a street after me! Triq Kenneth Zammit Tabona, pittur u estetista! How I'd howl with ghostly laughter every time a dog pays its respects at the street corner! I would also haunt all chewers of gum till they either swallowed it or regurgitated it somewhere else! I would not allow more than two storeys per house and they would all have to be in the strict vernacular style! Phew! No one will dare name a street after me now!

I often wonder how a decision to name or rename a street or road is taken. I remember the drastic de-anglification of the Sliema roads in the 1970s when Prince of Wales Road became Manwel Dimech Street and the Upper and Lower Victoria Terraces became Princess Poutiatine Street etc., etc.

There are actually a few survivors, like Windsor Terrace (not much of a terrace, mind you, more like the Grand Canyon) and Amery Street, which escaped the rechristening zeal but the people of "Tas-Sliema" still stubbornly refer to Victoria Avenue as Victoria Avenue as obstinately as all Malta refers to Republic Street in Valletta as Strada Rjali which overrides two rechristenings if one counts Kingsway!

To get back to the Maltese historical personages on the "new" streets and the genealogical puzzles, I am still flabbergasted at the way some of them are written.

Sir Luigi Sceberras Square is spelled incorrectly as Sir Luigi was Sceberras not Sciberras. Somewhere on the outskirts of Lija is Triq Markiz Censu Depiro! With all due respect to our beloved ex-President Tabone, no 18th century Maltese marquis would ever refer to himself as Censu! That would be like asking a cow to lay an egg! The street-naming board, whoever they may be, should be more historically and sociologically attentive.

So here we are discussing street names and ancestral tables and arriving at the same puzzle again; language! The mishmash of Maltese, Italian and English in this country is amazing! In fact, when examining an average Maltese family tree, one can actually see the linguistic trends in the chosen Christian names!

Up to the middle of the 19th century they are all Italianate; Ninfas, Rosaleas, Antonios, Giuseppes and Pandolfos are common, then suddenly they are transformed into Evelyns, Edgars, Godfreys, Alfreds and Harriets! Today, they are of Esperanto-like encyclopaedic invention!

We, Maltese, always seem to be in a state of flux! Even the simplest things like the language chosen for Christian names must be the most colourful in Europe!

If one takes the prime ministers of all the EU countries, ours is the only one with a name that is not a homegrown one; Edward/Eddie (more British than that you cannot get) Fenech Adami! How on earth did I get saddled with a name like Kenneth that is as Scottish as haggis?

Yes we are indeed unique and I am sure that these quaint idiosyncrasies will prove that we will be more at home in Europe than we can ever imagine! As a taxi driver told me last Christmas Eve: La nidhlu ahna dawk l-istilel ingibuhom tondi! (Once we join the EU we will transmogrify the stars into spheres!)