A Jacuzzi by Any Other Name

“What’s in a name?” asks a despairing Juliet in Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.

It ended badly for her of course. But names can be a burden. We had a boy at school called Peter Vile. I knew a Peter Bottome at University. I know an Ufuk in Turkey.

The English speaking community are over it now, but six months ago when the posters first appeared they caused a smirk; a large billboard proudly advertising Kunt Jakuzi is still to be seen on the road from Akbel to Islamlar.

It is strategically placed to catch the many new landlords building mustakil (secluded) villas for newly enriched pious Anatolians. They are screened all around to ensure privacy. The villages surrounding Kalkan are bursting with them.

The many newly established villa rental companies compete to promote the charms of their offerings. In such properties the bedroom jacuzzi is a must have accessory. 

“Have the holiday of a lifetime in our luxury dream villas. Forget your troubles and enjoy the view of a big white sheet from your private insanity pool? Or relax with your loved one over a glass of Cola in the warm bubbles of our top of the range Kunt Jakuzi.”

If the eponymous owner of Kunt Bay Jacuzi ever set up with Ufuk they would make a great legal team.

Ufuk ‘N Kunt
Divorce Attorneys
‘We tell it how it is’.

In the expat community, we make extensive use of nicknames to differentiate between high frequency first names: Vodka Tony, Barfly Barry, Welsh Tom etc.There is more than one Chris too. Lavanta Chris works as a manager on the Lavanta holiday estate. Then there is Chris Blue. So named because of her cute little dog Blue, who went everywhere with her. Sadly he got run over and is no longer. But is immortalised in a name.

Names stick. Turks, certainly in our village, like to use nicknames. Possibly because most are called Mehmet so a little differentiation is called for. Take Hassan, who runs the excellent Bodamya Tepe restaurant, in Islamlar. His father, Ömer, is a dapper man who wears sharp shoes, smart trousers and even a sports jacket. His hair curls onto his collar. In a nation with a barber on every corner (mostly called Mehmet) this is unusual. He has obviously always been something of a dandy as he was nicknamed Disco Ömer in the 1970s. The name stuck.

My favourite in the village is Alman (the German). This name was earned by a villager who spent six months working in Germany in the 1960s. He is still known as Alman sixty years later. His son now in his fifties is called Küçük Alman (The Young German).

I spent years at boarding school and then University studying Latin and Greek. It is not much use in today’s world, unless you live in the Vatican. However, it is the basis for many of the world’s languages. You may know that sleep in Latin is somnare. But you may not know that to walk is ambulare. So now you know what a somnambulist is.

Somnambulism, in its more extreme forms, can be a serious disorder.

A friend of ours was woken by shouting and banging to find her husband, who suffered from the disorder in an extreme form, on top of the glass table smashing it with his heel to release their children who he was dreaming were trapped under ice.

I am probably talking to myself now but if you have hung in this long, thank you. And indeed a very big thank you to all my lovely readers. My posts generally attract between five and six hundred reads. The most widely read one had eighteen hundred unique visits. I am grateful to you all for the feedback and appreciation. However, after the Christmas and New Year post (looks like I will have plenty of time to write that one. Four days confined to barracks!) I shall take a break. Next year I am going to try and write a book.

The provisional title is “Inside the Bubble. A year in Turkey”. One part of the narrative will be an edited selection from anenglishmanabroad to give a flavour of expat life in this momentous year.Alongside I will splice in a parallel narrative of episodes telling the story of the Republic from its foundation by Atatürk to its current trajectory under Erdoğan. A tale of two realities

I will still do the occasional post, to try and keep my small but much appreciated readers on board. After all I will turn to you in the hope of shifting a few copies and at least recovering some of the costs of publishing.

Now pour yourself a glass and have that jacuzzi