Dobleve

  What is the “dobleve” thing anyway, its a weird name for a website.  Besides lots of typos (one time causing us to “lose” our packages in the black hole of customs for a month because they had the wrong email address), we also get questions about why we chose this name for our site.  Too clever by half is one way to describe it.  I’ll work up a better one below.

  In Spain it is common for people to have one first name and two last names.  I suspect this causes foreigners no end of confusion when filling out forms in Spain and probably likewise causes troubles for Spaniards in the US.  Normally the last names here are the family (fathers) name as is common in the US and the mothers family name, with the fathers family name taking precedence should you only feel like saying one last name.  Often people have 3-4 names in their name and a nickname to boot.  Had I been born here my name would likely have been Brian David Burke Wentz, although if I were allowed to pick it would have been Francisco José el Ventanador, aka Paco Pepe.

  When Shannon and I got married one of the things we needed to discuss was what to do with our names.  Would I take Shannon’s last name or keep my own?  Why is this even a question is one way to look at it, another is why is one name more important than another to a family?  We chose to take each others names, becoming the Walker Wentzes.  

  Doble Ve is one way to say the letter “W” in Spanish, used mostly in South America.  Uve Doble is the way “W” is said here in Spain.  Ooops, we didn’t know that when we picked the name.  Another of the funny differences in the various forms of Spanish out there that we didn’t know before we moved.  We’re still learning them.

  Since we’re both “W” last name people we thought this would be a nice name for our site, adding a little of our new Spanish life into the name of the site itself.  Of course now we have 2 W’s in our names but doblevedobleve would have been too much to ask any of you to type.