So my wife Alpha recently published a 240 page book on her father’s side of the family she had been working on for 9 years. It was warmly received by relatives, and now she has embarked on research into her mother’s side of the family, as well as my father’s family.
She was telling us about what she had already learned about my ancestors, the O’Livings.
“They were actually Vikings,” she said.
“Oh!” we said.
“That explains the urge to sack and slaughter priests,” I said, remembering the time a local priest made me carry sausages into the church in my pyjamas.
How the church had gotten into my pyjamas I’ll never know.
Alpha explained ancient versions of our name, and all the alternate spellings.
“The original name was Northfucker or something like that,” my wife said.
“I vote we change our name back to that,” I said. “We could spell it Norþfukr.”
Our daughters Beta and Gamma seconded the motion.
“Even better than changing it to Novak,” I ascertained. We recently decided life would be easier if we changed our name to Novak because that’s what most restaurants understood when we made reservations by telephone, to the point where we sometimes just capitulated and reserved tables under the name Novak, which has the big advantage that it contains no illegal characters (not everyone in Austria knows what an apostrophe is) and is immediately recognizeable. I had planned to adopt a friend named Novak as my brother. He brews beer at home, and often trades me some for bread I bake. Anyway, we decided Norþfukr was even better.
Although it would not actually solve the problem at all.
“A table for two for Norþfukr, please.”
“N- what?”
“Norþfukr. En-oh-arr-thorn-eff-yu-kay-arr.”
“Enoh-arr-uh…?”
“Thorn.”
“Thorn?”
“You know, looks like a sunset, turned on its side? Or a bald man sticking his head through a hole in a fence? Or… You know what, put it under Novak.”
“Yes, sir!”