Tin

What’s with names? When I first was aware of having a name, the name was “Tin”. Then when I was about 8 years old, my mother told me that my name was actually “Marnix” but everyone in the family was using the name “Tin”, a nickname. I thought this was wrong. I thought people should be called by their name. I didn’t really know about nicknames. It just seemed like a mistake had been made.

So my mother asked me if I wanted to be called “Marnix”. I said that if that was my name, then of course that’s what I should be called. I didn’t consider it a matter of preferences and it wasn’t explained to me that using a nickname wasn’t illegal, wrong, or immoral. So from then on, I was called Marnix.

Years later I learned why it was that I had been called “Tin”. To this day I find it hard to believe, but according to my mother, when I was a baby and I was shown to my older brother, Ronald, he couldn’t pronounce “Marnix”, but instead said “Tin”. I find it hard to believe that Ronald even tried to pronounce “Marnix” and if he did try, that it could have come out as “Tin”. But that was the excuse.

I was born in a hospital in Utrecht, the Netherlands, during WWII. The German military was occupying the Netherlands. Food was rationed. Most of it went to the Germans. My mother spent many days bicycling into the country side where it was sometimes possible to get food from a farmer. My father was hiding much of the time as any healthy adult male could be taken away at gun point to go work in German factories or to do other sorts of labor for the Germans. That winter of 1944 was known as the “hunger winter” (“honger winter” in Dutch).

1944 German Military Order to Dutch citizens.
ORDER. On order of the German military all men between 17 and 50 years old should register for grave digging work. Consequently all men of these ages should without further ado immediately go stand in the street. Women and children must stay home. He, who is encountered during house visitation, will be punished. Proof of exemption to civll or military requirements must be brought along. Such proof does not preempt the registration obligation. To be brought along: warm clothes, durable shoes, blankets, foodstuff, eating utensils, knife, fork, and spoon. Bicycles brought along remain in possession of the owner. The daily compensation consists of good fare, smoking items and 5 guilders. Leaving the community is forbidden to all inhabitants. Shots will be fired if flight is attempted. –( Holland was fully liberated around 1945-05-05 )

Since we were lacking in nutrition, it’s possible we (my parents, my brother, and myself) were underweight. So sometimes I think maybe Ronald was looking at me and saying “thin” with a Dutch accent so it sounded like “tin”! Nice hypothesis, except my brother spoke no English back then and the Dutch equivalent, “dun”, doesn’t sound enough like “tin”. But surely Ronald was trying to say something about me. I have yet to figure out what it was. But use of “Tin” was fully gone as of 1952. I don’t think I’ll ever know what Ronald must have meant when he said “Tin”.

Later. I first posted the above around March 2023. It is now May 17, 2023. In the meantime, my brother Ronald has let me know that as he recalls it, when he was a toddler and was introduced to me, he was trying to refer to me as as “child”, which in Dutch is a word that sounds like “kint” and somehow he pronounced that more like “tin”.