WRITING | LANGUAGES | CREATIVE WRITING
My Name, My Home
What’s in a name (or a surname)?
No cabe duda. Ésta es mi casa
aquí sucedo, aquí
me engaño inmensamente.
Ésta es mi casa detenida en el tiempo.(“Ésta es mi casa” — Mario Benedetti)*
Goikoetxea.
At 52-years-old, it was the first time I’d seen my Basque surname spelled properly. I’d always been under the impression that the correct spelling was “Goycochea”, like the former Argentinian goalkeeper’s surname. But, there it was, Goikoetxea, meaning “topmost house” (goiko, “of the top”, and etxe, “house”)
The person who contributed to my enlightenment was a writer flogging his children’s books in the busy Órgiva market. He was Basque himself and we’d struck up a conversation about identity and belonging, two subjects close to my heart and which form the core of my book, Cuban Immigrant, and Londoner. My Basque interlocutor had moved from northern Spain to the south several years before and now considered himself as much an “andalu’” as a citizen of Bilbao, his birthplace.
I’ve often wondered what lies in a name, or a surname, as in my case. Back in 2019, when I went back to Havana to visit my mum I made a series of recordings in which I asked her to tell me as much about our family’s…
