Leonardo Haberkorn

We've all heard about the cultural tradition some places for naming kids after famous figures without reference to good taste or how it will impinge their life prospects (although last I heard it was the Indian state of Meghalaya where people were calling their kids Lenin and Switzerland and Frankenstein and Barrister). But Peruvian journalist Haberkorn actually took the next step, tracking down a bunch of Uruguayan men named Hitler to see how it had affected their lives. Uruguayans have a tradition of current events-relevant naming, which means there are a bunch of old Uruguayan men born in the Thirties whose village parents had heard this guy was making waves but not yet that they were kind of bad waves, and voila. The article founders on the same rock as so many great story ideas: none of these men have much interesting to say. their lives have been kind of hard and depressing, but you get the feeling that has more to do with being a Uruguayan peasant. And some of them like the name, and some don't, and they all got over it long ago and decided to use it or not and get on with their lives. There's something about sad old men that kills any quirky interest you might otherwise get out of this absurd phenomenon. Article appeared in Etiqueta Negra in 2008.… (más)