Sarkozy, What's in a Name Can Be Funny

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former President of France, has been roaring like a hungry lion on the world's political stage. I'm not French or in France, nor am I involved in international politics, so I don't really have much to say about him from a pundit's point of viewn. However, I am always looking for the humor in things and I found a real ha ha (or, is it ho ho? Dunno?) not in his political posturing, but in his name. .

Sarkozy, who carries his Hungarian father's last name, is pronounced quite differently in Hungary than in the rest of the world. That is, in Hungary the letter 'S' is pronounced "SH" and if you wanted the western 'S' sound you would spell it in Hungarian with the letter 'Sz'. When the French or anyone else pronounce his name it sounds like Sarkozy, but when pronounced in Hungarian, it sounds like 'Sharkozy'. No big deal you say. This is where the ha ha and the ho ho come into play.

I'm not Hungarian, but I've been living here nigh a decade; I have become accustomed to the nuance of the Hungarian language. When the syllable "sar" is pronounced without the 'H' sound, phonetically, in Hungarian it means fecal matter. Yup, I'm sorry to put it so bluntly. The 'Sar' sound without the "sh" component is excrement. Every Sarkozy in Hungary is sounded out as SHARkozy. Any other verbalization would cause hysterics.

One more thing: The end of his name "kozy" or "kozi" means "in between" in Hungarian. Therefore, when his name is pronounced with a western 's' sound, here in Hungary, it means "In between excrement."

I know that facts like this are very important to you so I felt impelled to pass this info on to you. The fact that he is a right wing S.O.B. only concretizes in my mind, that he was appropriately named.