Independent Malta’s first prime minister always signed his Christian name as Giorgio. To his party’s supporters, Borg Olivier was known by the Maltese version, Ġorġ. But that is what others affectionately called him. When presenting himself, even in a letter in English to the queen, he signed Giorgio.
No doubt, that’s how he also signed his prickly correspondence with this newspaper in the 1950s, after the first time he lost power. Yet, here, his name appeared in print as George.
It still does. Only last week, the eagle-eyed copy editors of this column (who have often saved me from my own typos and errors) pounced: Giorgio, once more, became George. And, where Times of Malta leads, the other English-language media follow.
It’s more peculiar than it might seem. The reason can’t be the house style. Otherwise we’d be reading about the former presidents Guy De Marco and Hugh Mifsud Bonnici.
The paper would report on the Thomas Fenech and Sylvester Debono commercial groups. We’d be instructed on the law in op-eds by the former European commissioner, Tony Borg.
Instead, it’s Guido, Ugo, Tumas, Silvio and Tonio. Even Borg Olivier’s brother is referred to, quite properly, as Paolo, not Paul.
What’s in a name? Try telling that to the chairman of the Strickland Foundation, Giovanni Bonello. I don’t envy the copy editor who plucks up the courage to tell Vanni that “Johnny” smells as sweet.
You don’t have to wish to be a fly on the wall to overhear that conversation. We know what Bonello would say. He’s said it already, nine years ago, in this newspaper’s sister paper, when insisting that the grand master who led the victory over the Ottomans in 1565 should be known as De Valette (and not La Valette or even De la Valette):
“A person’s correct name is what that person invariably calls himself – and what others who knew him invariably call him during his lifetime. There is no other ‘correct name’. Names are not options left to posterity to choose à la carte according to the whim of the moment and of the diner.”
The Borg Olivier case is more complicated than De Valette’s. For one thing, he isn’t called George on a momentary whim. It’s intergenerational, a proper Times tradition, which by now feels natural not quirky.
Like most traditions, its origin has been lost in the mists of time. A veteran Times editor admitted to me that the Borg Olivier case is mysterious. There’s no rule behind it. At the same time, he was “always” reported on as George – to the extent that it’s George that feels right, even though one can’t explain why.
Next, the ‘Bonello rule’ on names doesn’t apply here. Borg Olivier was routinely referred to as George, in his lifetime, by others who knew him. Well, by the newspaper of his then political opponent, Mabel Strickland, with whom he engaged in polemic.
Names are not just neutral identifiers. They tell us something about the world a child was born into- Ranier Fsadni
The Bonello rule is very good for identifying names. It wasn’t devised to sort out contested names and their connotations.
Names are not just neutral identifiers. They tell us something about the world a child was born into. In an unequal society, they reveal both preordained class and social mobility, destiny and ambition, personality and struggle.
Salvu, Sammy and Vivi are all short for Salvatore, just as Emmy, Manuel and Leli are all short for Emmanuel but each diminutive stands for its own cultural enclave.
When Salvu decides he’s going to be Sam, it’s a decision to change his social personality, not just his name. In ancient times, slaves couldn’t name themselves. Names are not just labels. They’re a statement of identity.
Borg Olivier’s name represents the Italianate world he was born in and continued to identify with. Although he drew political inspiration from moderate British liberalism (not Italian), in other ways he was Italian to the core, even in his superstitions (he was wary of the number 17, not 13, for example). When, on achieving Independence, he exchanged messages broadcast in Italy with prime minister Aldo Moro, Borg Olivier’s improvised Italian was crisper than that of the meandering Moro.
Given all this, why would the Times have chosen to negate what the name Giorgio stood for? Here’s my guess: it was political teasing begun by one party leader against another.
There was a precedent for such teasing. Borg Olivier’s predecessor, Ugo Mifsud, had been taunted by Gerald Strickland for having a name that meant ‘rot’. Mifsud, who took this badly, was informed by a young Erin Serracino-Inglott that the etymology of Mifsud also embraced phlebotomy, the surgical letting of blood — and Mifsud had his comeback retort.
Mabel Strickland wasn’t as rough with Borg Olivier. But I’ve no doubt that insisting on calling him George was an implicit taunt that he couldn’t have things his way, that she could choose for him, the anti-imperialist, a British name. The name became a pawn in a game of political one-upmanship.
In its historical context, such teasing can pass. But the game has long been over. If my guess is right, then it’s part of our cultural history and tells us something about those times. We shouldn’t obliterate it from memory.
But we shouldn’t persist with it either. We can’t even remember what the game was about. At this stage, it’s senseless.
There’s no point in continuing to refer to Borg Olivier by a name he didn’t identify with as I’m sure the editor-in-chief of this newspaper, my fine friend Ermanno Grech, will agree.