Diane. Dijana. Dijan. Dajen. Dajana. Daniela. Dani.
In Croatia, I get called so many different versions of my name.
Does it matter?

Croatia is one of the few places in the world where people don’t ask me how to pronounce my last name – where I don’t have to explain that you roll the r and pronounce the c like the ‘tz’ in tzatziki.

It is also, strangely, the place where people most often mispronounce my first name and where there are more versions of my name floating around than I can count.

I’d like to say that I don’t think about it much. That it doesn’t bother me. That people can call me what they want so long as they call me. The truth is, I think about it a lot. And yeah, sometimes it bothers me.

It all used to be much simpler.

When I was a kid, there was a clear dichotomy between what I was called in Australia and Croatia. In Australia I was called by the name on my passport, Diane. In Croatia, I was called Dijana, presumably because someone decided that it was easier to remember and pronounce the Croatianised version of my actual name.  

For many years, everyone followed along. Australia = Diane. Croatia = Dijana. It was a neat and tidy system that worked.

Not only that, I liked having a second name. It was like having an alter ego. There was the Australian me and the Croatian me. I belonged to two worlds, and I had a separate identity in each. It was kind of nice.

But then things started to change.

Some of my relatives in Croatia started calling me Diane, or their version of it, which sounded more like Dajen or Dijan or Dajana or Dani. I didn’t correct them, but I continued referring to myself as Dijana in the hopes they’d get the hint. They did not.

Then I started meeting more Croats who speak English and with whom I speak English either part of, or all of, the time. It seemed to make sense to introduce myself to them as Diane, even though we were in Croatia.

Until now I’d always thought of the Diane/Dijana dichotomy as being split geographically, but now I was starting to think of it as a linguistic split (English = Diane; Croatian = Dijana).

This would have worked fine if I only speak Croatian with some people, and if I only speak English with others, and if those two groups of people never meet. This, fortunately or unfortunately, isn’t the case. I constantly change between the two languages and so do many of them.

Basically, it’s become a big old mess. My beautiful, neat, two-name system has collapsed, and I no longer know how to introduce myself to people in Croatia.

At times, I wonder if it’s time to ditch Dijana altogether. My real name is Diane after all. So what if it gets slightly mispronounced at times. Is that really such a big deal?

But I realise that it’s not just about that. I like having a Croatian name. Maybe it’s because I’m not from here and I still, at times, feel like I don’t fit in. Maybe all those slight mispronunciations of my name remind me of that and make me secretly wish my parents had given me a Croatian name.

And then I remember that you should be careful what you wish for.

My parents were going to name me Zorka, which was the name of both my maternal and paternal grandmothers. Let me tell you that names don’t get more old-school Croatian than that. And while I reckon, at this age, I could rock a name like Zorka, high school would have been a very different story. I could just see myself demanding that my bullies roll the r when they call me ‘Zorka the Porker’.

I’m still not entirely sure how best to introduce myself when I meet new people in Croatia, but lately I’ve been giving them a choice. ‘Call me Diane or Dijana’, I tell them. ‘Whichever you prefer.’

Let my worlds collide and we’ll see what happens.