A man in Nova Scotia has been banned from having his last name on his licence plate. It\u2019s been determined that it\u2019s now too rude. This, despite him having had the plate in the family for decades. Unfortunately, he\u2019s just another victim of Trump\u2019s style (or lack of it).<\/p>\n
The man in question is of German heritage; his name is Lorne Grabher, and if one applies English pronunciation rules to the name, it\u2019s easy to see how those indiscreet remarks captured on video of Trump saying how he goes out catching cats has caused this kerfuffle.<\/p>\n
I speak no German\u2026 to speak of\u2026, so I must rely on online translation tools for my research. They inform me that \u201cgrabher\u201d has something to do with graves and\/or digging. (Certainly the \u201cgrab\u201d part does.) So taken in the context of German, there should be no offence given or taken. My only thought here is that I hope thedonald continues to dig his own political grabher with his words and deeds.<\/p>\n
In our politically correct world, it\u2019s rude to poke fun at a person\u2019s name. People with last names like Pratt, Titmarsh, and Balls must have collectively sighed with relief when this change of attitude occurred. I know I did (more below). But our politically correct world is also all so mixed up now\u2014it\u2019s like the planet is a giant blender and someone flipped the switch. The result is that we have people whose names are perfectly innocent in their country of origin finding that the same cannot be said in their country of choice.<\/p>\n
International goods producers and marketers have found this out to their cost. A number of websites inform us of<\/p>\n
There are many other examples to be found on the wonderweb\u2014I leave it to you to find them and verify their authenticity.<\/p>\n
Nova Scotia keeps a list of words that are unacceptable on their licence plates.\u00a0 They include DOOBIE, HOTFU, and GONADS. I shudder to think what else is on there. Here in Alberta, many years ago I saw a car with \u201cBOLLOX\u201d as its front (vanity) plate. Misspelt it may be; innocuous in parts of North America it may be, but that is not a polite word in the UK\u2014here in Canada, British ex-pat kids delight in teaching it to Canadian kids so they get into trouble with their more worldly teachers.<\/p>\n
Grabher laments that he\u2019ll now have to have his name taken out of the phone book, and get his wife to change the name of her consultancy business. I can reassure him on the first point\u2014nobody uses phone books anymore, except as doorstops.<\/p>\n
But back to people\u2019s last names. My last name\u2014Gothard\u2014is, to the best of my knowledge English, at least for the last 200 years. Yet I was mocked at school for it (oh for today\u2019s politically correct attitudes in the 1960s!). I have no plans to get a licence plate with my last name on, but I\u2019d sure like the right<\/em> to do so! It seems that in Nova Scotia, that might well be denied me.<\/p>\n Perhaps if I moved to Phuket\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A man in Nova Scotia has been banned from having his last name on his licence plate. It\u2019s been determined that it\u2019s now too rude. This, despite him having had the plate in the family for decades. Unfortunately, he\u2019s just another victim of Trump\u2019s style (or lack of it). The man in question is of German heritage; his name is… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,490],"tags":[664,316,318,317],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","category-the-commentaries","tag-500words","tag-last-names","tag-licence-plate","tag-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1544,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}