I had a bit of an obsession with the news when I was a kid. My brothers and cousins and I used to pretend to run a newspaper and a radio station. We once won a fiver on a local radio phone-in competition, maybe that had something to do with it.
In the midst of one such game of ‘radio’ my older brother was interviewing me for some imaginary segment. “Where are you from?” he asked. I was 7 or 8 but I was playing an adult so I tried to give a grown-up answer and use the official name of the place I was from. “I’m from Londonderry,” I said.
“MEGAN! DON’T EVER SAY THAT! DON’T SAY LONDONDERRY!”
“Why?” I asked. I knew we all called it Derry, but the road signs read ‘Londonderry’ and that’s what the official-sounding English newsreaders called it too. I was constantly being corrected on my many Derry-isms – told to say “yes” and “no” rather than “aye” and “naw”. I guess I just assumed this was another of those colloquialisms. But apparently not.
“Just don’t say it, Megan, ok? Always say ‘Derry’.” My brother’s initial response had been so explosive I didn’t dare ask the question a second time. I also sensed that he, at 9 or 10 years old, didn’t know the answer himself.
Style guides of major media outlets to this day have an entry addressing the Derry/Londonderry naming question. I remember when Bill Clinton visited Derry in 1995 in the midst of the fledgling peace process. We got the day off school to go see him speak. The first sitting President of the US to ever visit Derry. He was careful with his words – “this city,” “your city,” “Derry,” “County Londonderry” – it was a fine balancing act. One local radio legend coined the term ‘Stroke City’ as a politically neutral way of referring to the city whose name was so often pronounced, “Derry stroke Londonderry”.
When I was in my mid-twenties a friend of mine moved into a new house share in London. He informed me one of his new housemates was also from Derry. But he couldn’t remember if he’d said Derry or Londonderry. And he couldn’t tell me which side of the community he was from. He lacked the key information I needed to make the deduction for myself – surname, what school he went to, where his parents live. So when I attended their house party not long after, I avoided the guy from Derry. On some level I think it’s because I didn’t want to risk saying ‘Derry’ and then finding out he was a Protestant and might have been offended. And I also didn’t want to risk hearing the word ‘Londonderry.’
The word is a trauma. I have a physical response to it. I’ve only come to realise that in recent years. Not so long ago, I noticed that when I read an article on the BBC News website and it mentions the word ‘Londonderry,’ I translate it in my head to ‘Derry’. Afraid to even think the word.
Last year an image of a little comic strip popped up on my Facebook feed after some of my friends from home ‘liked’ it. There were 4 panels:
Panel 1: We see two stick figures and a dog. Person 1 asks person 2, “Does your dog bite?”
Panel 2: Person 2 replies, “No, but he can hurt you in other ways.”
Panel 3: Person 1 looks confused. “What do you mean?”
Panel 4: The dog says, “Londonderry.” Person 1 cries in agony.
Questions like “Where are you from?” or “What do you do?” seem like the most straightforward, innocuous things to be asked, but there can often be a lot going on under the surface when we’re confronted with apparently simple questions.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to complications and confusions that have been silently and not so silently passed down to me. We are influenced and shaped by the culture in which we grew up in so many ways. I’m just beginning to peel back the layers.
