phonebook
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Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia is a blog (a weblog, like this one), but in print. The book is built of snippets of thought and research, united by the story of Chatwin’s journey through this continent’s southern extremes. He enters Argentina through Buenos Aires, and while passing through picks up a telephone book:
"The story of Buenos Aires is written in its telephone directory. Pompey Romanov, Emilio Rommel, Crespina D.Z. de Rose, Ladislao Radziwil, and Elizabeta Marta Callman de Rothchild – five names taken at random from among the R’s – told a story of exile, disillusion and anxiety behind lace curtains."
Chatwin’s book was written in 1977, when there were more lace curtains, and probably less anxiety. None of the people he mentions are still listed, although the last names remain (save Radziwil – only Radzwiller and Radziwilowski are to be found). In looking up these five names, however, I couldn’t help but notice that the R’s are dominated by Rodriguez, which takes up 16.5 pages. With 136 or so names per column and five columns per page, that makes over 11,000 Rodriguez households. It’s 1% of the 1679-page phonebook.
Rodriguez appears to be the most common name here, but Gonzalez (16 pages) and Martinez (10.5 pages) are not far behind – together accounting for another 18,000 households.
There are only 4 Menems.
There are a lot of Italian names – there are more Capones than Petersons, for example, including an Alfred. But no single Italian name can compare to the popularity of the more classically Spanish appellidos.
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