My Name is Michael, I Got a Nickel...

OK, this post has been a long time coming.

For over a decade, peo­ple keep ask­ing me, “So, what is it: Michel? Michael? Mike? What?” (I pre­fer “Mas­ter,” but I digress.)

My won­der­ful wife calls me “Mish.” (Short for “Michel,” pro­nounced “Mish-​​al.”) In turn, I call her “Rish,” which is short for “Licorice.” The story behind it is, when we first met, a friend told us we were love­birds, always together, insep­a­ra­ble. Like licorice.

(We still are! In fact, we even merged our busi­nesses and cre­ated a new umbrella com­pany, called “The Licorice Group, LLC.” Now there’s a twist!)

Any­way, here’s the thing.

My full name is “Michel Guy Joseph Fortin.” (Or just “Michel Fortin.” Just like this blog’s address.) It’s a French-​​Canadian name, as I was born in Gatineau, Que­bec, oh, 40 years ago.

(In fact, that was the loca­tion of a long-​​time ana­lyt­ics pack­age I used to use for my web­sites, until they were acquired by Microsoft, called “Deep Metrix.” To give you an idea, Microsoft is about to launch their met­rics pack­age to com­pete with Google, based on that pack­age, code­named “Gatineau.”)

Any­way, here’s the prob­lem. Being in a bilin­gual coun­try, most anglo­phone Cana­di­ans will instantly know that “Michel” can be male or female. But when I was intro­duced to my very first Amer­i­can client over a decade ago, he responded in a sur­pris­ingly con­fused and dis­con­cert­ing manner:

“What?! But, you’re not a girl?”

This con­fused me at first, since the female ver­sion of the name requires an “e” at the end. Sim­i­lar to Ital­ian, Span­ish, or any other Latin-​​based lan­guage, words that end with “a” are female, and “o” (or the lack of an “e” in French) are male. Like “Gino” ver­sus “Gina.”

But this strange event hap­pened again and again. It hap­pened more times than I cared to count. So at a cer­tain point, I felt com­pelled to do some­thing about it, since I was get­ting tired of explain­ing myself.

And here’s what I did.

As a child, my French-​​speaking par­ents nick­named me “Michael.” I even remem­ber when they bought me my first 45-​​speed vinyl record, which was “Play­ground In My Mind” by Clint Holmes. (The cho­rus goes, “My name is Michael, I got a nickel…”)

I also remem­ber when I took Eng­lish immer­sion in junior high school. (Boy, do I remem­ber!) When we were asked to intro­duce our­selves on the first day of school, I told my teacher, Sis­ter Helen (yes, it was a catholic school and some of our teach­ers were nuns), that my name was “Michael.”

The prin­ci­pal was in class that day. (Iron­i­cally, his name was “Michel, too.) I remem­ber Sis­ter Helen look­ing at me, with a stern frown. She said in her dis­ap­prov­ing voice: “Names are not translatable!”

Now, maybe she said that because fran­coph­one Que­beck­ers are very pro­tec­tive of their lan­guage and cul­ture. (They even insti­tuted laws to do so.) But lit­tle did she know that I was using the nick­name my par­ents used so often, even when they, or I, couldn’t speak a smidgen of English.

I thought I was being smart by using it in class. (Luck­ily, I’m a quick study. I learned faster than any other kid in class. So Sis­ter Helen was a lot gen­tler with me as time went on. I even became her teacher’s pet.)

And you know, for a lot of French Cana­di­ans it seems, call­ing a fran­coph­one per­son by the Eng­lish ver­sion of their name often ends up as a nick­name. It’s like a term of endear­ment, par­tic­u­larly when used by your clos­est friends and family.

(As a kid, when my par­ents used to call me by my French name — that is, my real name — it was like an alarm bell because I knew I was in trou­ble for something!)

I’m used to “Michael.” It’s my nick­name. And it’s the name I use in busi­ness and the name I intro­duce myself with. Sure, it’s spelled “Michel.” But I pro­nounce it, and pre­fer, “Michael.” So if you ever won­dered, now you know.

I hope this solves it once and for all.

Most French Cana­di­ans are bilin­gual. In fact, many fran­coph­one Cana­di­ans incor­po­rate Eng­lish words in their day-​​to-​​day vocab­u­lary. (I know we did as kids in both grade and high schools. A lot.)

Here’s a per­fect exam­ple. It’s also one of my favorite vlog­gers (i.e., video blog­gers) on the Inter­net. This guy is from Mon­treal and he pro­duces videos with clay­ma­tion char­ac­ters, with his own face super­im­posed. It’s the fun­ni­est stuff I’ve ever seen!

If you’re Amer­i­can or an anglo­phone Cana­dian, you’ll hope­fully grasp at least 50% of what this next video says. (Just the video itself is a riot!) And if you’re Cana­dian or of French descent, let me warn you: you’re going to roll on the floor laugh­ing your pos­te­rior off. I know I did.

Here it is: it’s a great satire of those direct response infomer­cials.

About the Author

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