Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Setting the record straight

Jay Nordlinger of NRO is always a good read, and lately he's written some items worthy of inclusion in this blog. About Frenches and mustard.

Here he mentions a press release for French's Mustard, which notes that it is all-American. In fact, it was introduced nearly 100 years ago right here in St. Louis along with the then-newfangled hotdog. So don't let that name fool you.

Just in case that wasn't enough, he published an email here which said "Dear Jay: Just because French's is yellow doesn't mean it's French."

Elsewhere in the same item was another email:
"Dear Jay: My sympathies to French's Mustard. [This refers to an Impromptus item from Friday.] My last name (by marriage) is French. My ex-husband had not a single tiny drop of French blood in his family tree. I don't know where the name came from. But now, I am honestly considering changing my and my kids' names to something else. My son (twelve years old) is being harassed and bullied for having the name 'French' and kids are accusing him of being French, which is an enormous insult and the kids all know it. I don't whether this will blow over or not."
Take pride in your name. I can't find it just now, but I'll swear I recently read something that said that that name came from Scotland and was an abbreviated form of "killer of Frenchmen" or the like.

Enough Frog-bashing for now. After all, I'm a Kraut.

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