Utg\u00e5va 41, Oktober 1994, Bo \u00c5kermark, Stockholm<\/p>\r\n
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Invented Names<\/p>\r\n
\u2026”In my circle of tea-drinking students at H\u00f6torget in the 1950s, there was a troubled Andersson. He was to marry a Miss Grill and could rightly expect pursed lips from his future in-laws, one of the country’s most proud of lineage (coat of arms from Augsburg 1571, owned trading houses at Stortorget in Stockholm as well as the ironworks of \u00d6sterby, Iggesund and S\u00f6derfors, and founded the East India Company). He realised he must change his name.<\/p>\r\n
It ought preferably to be a name that ‘sounded noble’, not a Stigemyr or Bjurefjong or H\u00e4gerb\u00e5ge. Or at least sound like a solid upper-middle-class surname.<\/p>\r\n
Swedish naming customs are good. Most names that don’t end in -son are compound: Two parts of rather simple, comprehensible words from the dictionary. The first can be varied endlessly, but the second consists of certain standard words, such as -berg, -borg, -gren, -mark, -qvist, -stedt, -strand…<\/p>\r\n
Andersson began by extracting from the telephone directory as many ending elements as he could find. And then we grilled him: Raised in Gudhem in V\u00e4sterg\u00f6tland, between Skara and Falk\u00f6ping, near Lake Hornborga.<\/p>\r\n
He struck out ‘Gud’ but added to the list: Hem-, West-, Wester-, G\u00f6t-, Land-, Skar-, Fahl-, Horn-, Borg-, Sj\u00f6-….<\/p>\r\n
It was more than enough, and Andersson set off with two small slips of paper in hand to the patent office to check if any of the combinations were available for application.<\/p>\r\n
Several were. So on 28 April 1956, we attended a wedding outside Motala at Godeg\u00e5rd, which had been inherited in the Grill family since 1775. There, the newly minted Hornstrand was wed to Miss Grill.<\/p>\r\n
Incredible that such a good name could have remained available! Who would be surprised to find a Hornstrand as mayor or councillor in Stockholm in the 18th century?<\/p>\r\n
The laborious investment paid off. The young couple from 1956 are still married today, albeit in their 60s.”\u2026<\/p>\r\n
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Our name begins at the water. Hornstrand<\/em> means the shore of a lake \u2014 and ours is Hornborgasj\u00f6n, the still water in V\u00e4sterg\u00f6tland where Cleive grew up.<\/p>\r\n In 1992, Cleive and Charlotte travelled across China on a long guided journey, sailing the Yangtze in the years before the great dams rose and changed the river forever. Along the way they met an elderly scholar, and told him the story of the family: how the name was rooted in the lakeshore of Cleive\u2019s boyhood, and how Charlotte\u2019s forebears, through the Grill family and the Swedish East India Company, had sailed from another shore to trade with Canton throughout the 1800s.<\/p>\r\n Drawing on their story \u2014 and on an old Chinese poem the name brought to his mind \u2014 the scholar composed three characters for the family:<\/p>\r\n \u6e56\u3000\u6ff1\u3000\u752b\u3000\u00b7\u3000h\u00fa \u00b7 b\u012bn \u00b7 f\u01d4<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u6e56<\/strong> is the lake<\/em> \u2014 the calm water of home and memory. Read together, the seal is a small poem \u2014 by the still lake, at the water\u2019s edge, a family of honour<\/em> \u2014 binding the Swedish shore that gave us our name to the distant shore that shaped our history.<\/p>\r\n And there is an older echo here. Charlotte\u2019s Grill forebears lived by a motto \u2014 familjen Grills livssyn<\/em> \u2014 a verse on fortune\u2019s risings and fallings that ends:<\/p>\r\n \u201cUpp eller ned, hvarth\u00e4n ditt steg dig f\u00f6r, att \u00e4rligt varar l\u00e4ngst du minnas b\u00f6r.\u201d<\/em> Two centuries later, in another language and another land, the scholar chose \u752b<\/strong> \u2014 honour<\/em> \u2014 as the family\u2019s third character. Without knowing the Grill creed, he had named the very thing they had always held: that integrity outlasts all the turns of fortune.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The lakeshore, and the seal of our name Our name begins at the water. Hornstrand means the shore of a lake \u2014 and ours is Hornborgasj\u00f6n, the still water in V\u00e4sterg\u00f6tland where Cleive grew up. In 1992, Cleive and Charlotte travelled across China on a long guided journey, sailing the Yangtze in the years … <\/p>\n
\u6ff1<\/strong> is the shore<\/em>, the water\u2019s edge \u2014 together, \u6e56\u6ff1 says \u201clakeshore,\u201d our name rendered faithfully; and an edge from which Charlotte\u2019s family once set sail for China.
\u752b<\/strong> is a classical mark of honour, added in the old texts to the names of learned and esteemed people. With it, the scholar lifted \u201clakeshore\u201d into something more: the one of standing who dwells where the lake meets the land.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n
(Up or down, wherever your steps may lead \u2014 remember that what is done in honesty endures the longest.)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n