What's in a name?

Lenin (Internet)

Long time ago I was christened as Cornelis Gerardus van Halderen, shortened for daily use to Kees (pronounced as "Case"). I have been quite content with my short name, but when I entered puberty (in the early sixties) I found that Kees was a rather bourgeois name. From then on I could have called myself Ilyich, or Yevgéniy, or Che (in certain circles quite fashionable names then), but I had a strong feeling that this might not catch on with many of my friends and family. Hence I chose a simpler solution: Change Kees into Cees, and all of a sudden a simple boy from a working class family had something special, something artistic.

Che Guevara (Internet)

And even though the pronunciation of both names should be different (Case becomes Sase), I can only remember one colleague who consequently called me "Sase". When time passes one realises that such adolescent behaviour had been rather childish, but by then I and the rest of the world got used to a name that is differently written than it is pronounced.
When we ended up in France I held on to my illogical short name, irrespective of the fact that some people were quite confused by it. Normally I am addressed as Kees (hence as Case), but some people address me as Cees, which they turn into "Cease".

Uitnodiging van de Préfect

The reason: they think that Cease sounds more logical and more English than Case (given the spelling of Cees). Again, in hindsight, I should have chosen to be called Cornelis (albeit this sounds very official to me) or Cornelius (not common, but also not totally unknown in France), or Gérard, a perfectly French name which also corresponds to my second Christian name.
Since I have obtained the French nationality another "problem" has arisen: my official name (in my French passport) has been changed to Cornelis Gerardus Van Halderen. (Note the capital V in my name!).

Monsieur Van....

It is a bit like in the Singaporean telephone directory: one found most Dutch nationals under D for De (Boer, etc.) or under V for Van (Houten, etc.) and not under B resp. H. As of now I am findable under V for Van Halderen, and no longer under H of Halderen as is normal in the Netherlands….

The Government Gazette, or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (part 6 of 6)

The Government Gazette

The last spasm related to my naturalisation was sending off the paperwork concerning my partner's name. Scanning was a bit tricky whilst on holiday, however, taking a picture in JPEG format was no problem and was just as good as a scanned copy. On March 14 we were at the consulate in Paris, received "THE" document (the excerpts from birth and marriage certificated I had already scanned beforehand), and the same day all documents and my answers to her questions were mailed to the Service Central Etat-Civil.

Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken

Of course we had no idea how everything would develop from there. However, on April 4 an e-mail ended our misery and despair: March 26 my dossier had been approved, and within a few weeks the decree regarding my naturalisation would be published in the Journal Officiel (the French Government Gazette). However, where does one buy a Government Gazette? Not at one's local Tabac, that is for sure!

What does he have to do with it?

And then it was again: wait, wait, and wait…. Finally Saturday 23 April the long awaited letter from the Ministry of the Interior landed in our letterbox: my naturalisation as a Frenchman was registered in the "Journal Officiel" of (Sunday!) 3 April by decree no. 13. Once knowing this it was just a matter of an internet search, and bingo, there was the decree of approx. 30 pages. With Photoshop it was a doddle to move my name out of the approx. 1200 to a prominent place just under the heading of the decree. Within six months the remaining paperwork should be finalized: a letter from the French President, the Livret de famille français and, who knows, maybe a blessing from the Pope.

Excerpt from the French Gazette of 3 April 2016

An overview of the road towards French citizenship:
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (deel 1 van 6) How to become French?
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (deel 2 van 6) The dossier
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (deel 3 van 6) The interview
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (deel 4 van 6) Bureaucracy
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (deel 5 van 6) What's in a name….

For our own website click here.

What's in a name…, , or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (part 5 of 6)

Court ruling

When I was asked by the French Ministry of the Interior to produce the court ruling concerning my divorce, I was unpleasantly surprised. The Préfecture in Mâcon had accepted the excerpt from the Dutch authorities which stated clearly when and from whom I was divorced, and I assumed that what was good enough for civil servant X should be good enough for civil servant Y. However, arguing with civil servants, no matter their nationality is by definition a lost cause, hence …..
After taking that hurdle early February 2016 my paperwork was most likely in order, and after that I could do nothing but wait, wait, wait…

Service Central Etat-Civil - Nantes

One day before we (on 12 March 2016) were off for a week's holiday in Paris I received a phone call from a lady working in Nantes, at the Service Central Etat-Civil, Département Établissement, whatever that may be. She confirmed that my paperwork was in order (pfff…), but that she still needed some information from me. It appeared that she was creating a complete new file, with birth, marriage, divorce etc. certificates, all in French this time, following French rules. Her first question was how I would like to be registered: as "Cornelis-Gerardus" or "Cornelis, Gerardus". That question was easily answered. Her second remark concerned my surname: however, here I was not given a choice. I will enter French history as "Van Halderen", not as "Halderen, van". One can live with that; it is always a big surprise how I have been registered in shops, with doctors, hospitals etc. Where to look, under V or under H?

British consulate Paris

Her last question was more problematic. My partner is a British citizen, and in England people are or were more or less free to change their name if they wished to do so. As a widow she had chosen to keep the surname of her deceased husband. Her passport only refers to Nixon; her maiden name Mullin is nowhere to be found. The French have a problem with that concept; it is a bit similar as in the Netherlands, where one is registered as Mrs. Nixon born Mullin. However, the name Mullin could not but after extensive searching be connected to the name Nixon, and that was something the lady from Nantes could not handle. She had a list of countries (like Russia) where one could legally and officially change his or her name, but the United Kingdom was not on that list.

Letter from the consulate

What to do about this? Well, that turned out to be relatively easy. Once we arrived in Paris we contacted the British consulate. They knew about these sort of problems, and they produced a bi-lingual document stating that the name in your passport is your legal name, and together with a birth and marriage certificate of my partner and of her parents that should satisfy the Lady in Nantes.

To be (hopefully soon) continued!

For our own website click here.

Bureaucracy, or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (part 4 of 6)

The French are notorious for their bureaucracy, certainly with the Brits and the Dutch.

A French civil servant

In my view the Dutch should not moan too much about bureaucracy, because Dutch civil servants can be far worse than French ones. The main difference between the two is in the approach of a problem. The French can be (depending on their mood) either absurdly strict when it comes to applying rules, or waive them. The waiving attitude is quite common in rural areas.

His Dutch counterpart

In the Netherlands rules are rules, and when an exception is made it has to be turned into a new rule first.
That makes French bureaucracy often unpredictable, and its Dutch counterpart sometimes frighteningly efficient. The latter comes in very handy when one requires official documents from authorities: requesting can be done through internet, paying uses internet as well, and normally the requested document lands within a week on your doorstep.

Paying online

However, there appears to be one exception: Dutch Courts of Law. For my application for French citizenship I needed an official court ruling concerning my divorce. After having explained to a French civil servant in Mâcon that I had no such piece of paper, and did not know how to get hold of it, but that the required information could be found on another official document issued by my place of birth, she waived the request as being fulfilled. Somehow I was not entirely happy with this solution: given Dutch efficiency it must be easy to get hold of something trivial like that?

Préfecture - Mâcon

Internet provided a solution. I downloaded (18 May 2015) a form from the Courts' website, filled it in and posted it to the Hague. Pretty quickly afterwards (26 May 2015) I received a letter that they could not find the ruling, could I provide them with a case number? After starting digging through my archives once more, I found a photo copy of a piece of paper concerning the ruling (that looked like it had been torn out of a scrapbook), which also mentioned a case number. There was no letterhead, nor anything else indicating this might be an official piece of paper, but it was all I had. I filled in the form once more, sent it off and waited.

Court of Law - The Hague

When, towards the end of the year I still had no news from the courts, I decided to phone them (we are writing 4 November 2015). They told me that they most likely had lost my application, because these things should not take longer than a month. Could I fill in a new form and submit it? The form was posted the same day.

Ministry of the Interior - Paris

A month later (4 December 2015) I received a photo copy of the same piece of scrap paper I had found in my archives, however, this time it was stamped and dated by the Courts in The Hague. And that was all, or so I thought.
Until… on 15 January 2016 I received a letter from a civil servant in the French Ministry of the Interior in Paris, who disagreed with her colleague of the Préfecture in Mâcon: could I please provide them with a the court ruling and a sworn translation, to be submitted at the latest two months after the dateline of the letter?

A warmly recommanded sworn translator

So I had not persued this document for nothing!

The translation was quickly organised, and the document was posted 4 February 2016 to Paris. And how will this story continue?
God, this time impersonated by a French civil servant, only knows….

Note : Most pictures are copied from the internet.

The interview, or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (part 3 of 6)

For part 1, click here, for part 2 click here.

Oh la la la, Marianne

Although we had planned our trip allowing for some delays, we arrived panting and sweating at the counter in Mâcon at 11h00 sharp, due to some tractors on the roads and the fact that 50% of the huge parking area nearby was closed off, and hence there were hardly any free spaces there. But anyway, French are never in time, and coming late seemed to be an auspicious way to start the process of becoming French. Besides, the interviewer was also not yet there. After waiting for 10 minutes I was taken into an office for the interview.

The motto of the République

The woman taking the interview turned out to be a very friendly woman. She wanted to know why I ended up living in France, what I was doing at this moment in time, whether I took part in local life, what I liked about France in particular, and, but she saved that one for last, why I would want to become a French citizen. In between there were some more questions, one of which was "I have to ask you this: What do you think a democracy is". When I started my answer with "A democracy is a political system in which the people….", she interrupted me saying "O, that is fine, you may stop, this suffices"; and at that point I thought this could not go wrong anymore.

Tricolore

And indeed, after 15 minutes of interview and five minutes of reading and signing a number of things I had read in the booklet, I was released with the promise that the paperwork would be processed in 6 to 12 months, and that after that I would be invited to a ceremony with the prefect in Mâcon, or, since there are some organisational changes in the pipe line, in Dijon. She added that I did not have to be there in person at all cost, but since we like Dijon very much…. We would not really mind to go there.
To be continued, hopefully soon.

Click here for the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.

The Dossier, or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (part 2 of 6)

For part 1, click here.

Livret du Citoyen

On the 18th of May we could go back to Mâcon to hand in the dossier. There they checked all the paperwork, they found it adequate and at the end told me that I would receive an invitaltion for an interview before the end of July. I received a booklet, required to be read as part of the citizenship course. The booklet was, although concise quite interesting. It explained in simple terms how the French political system works, that France is a parliamentarian democracy, that France knows a strict separation of church and state, how France is split up in regions and departments, and for those who are into history it contained a time line ranging from the caves of Lascaux via Clovis, Jeanne d'Arc, the Bourbons, the Revolution, the first and the second world wars and the Vichy regime to De Gaulle and the fifth Republic. I asked whether I had to learn all regions, departments and their capitals by heart, and the answer was a bit evasive. I got the impression that the whole thing sounded more serious than it was.
On May 21 an envelope in a familiar handwriting fell in the letterbox; it was one of the self-addressed envelopes I had to hand in with the dossier, and it contained an invitation for "the" interview in the near future.

Envelope addressed to myself

To be continued.

Click here for the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.

How to become French?, or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (part 1 of 6)

Mid-April 2015 we entered the prefecture in Mâcon in order to find out what exactly was needed to obtain French citizenship.

Préfecture - Mâcon

In the prefecture there is a special office for Naturalisations, there was no queue at the counter, and hence we were immediately dealt with by a very friendly lady. Just to be safe instead of sorry we had brought along our thick folder with "important papers". It helps enormously when one can actually show that an international birth certificate issued by Dutch authorities has a French text as well, and ask the French official whether this would suffice or not.

Folder with important papers

Fortunately the answer to the question was yes, and we finally went home with a long list of required official papers, and of other things we had to sort out. Two identical long forms had to be filled in, we had to pay legal dues, four pass photos (French style) had to be supplied, they wanted three envelopes addressed to myself and stamped, and further a wide range of papers of which the only one that might cause some problems was the declaration of good conduct. This is only issued in Dutch (and English) by the Dutch authorities, and hence it needed an official French translation.

French pass photos

After this my homework began. Most papers from the Dutch town halls could be obtained via the internet. A list with all my home addresses from my birth up to now gave a few more problems, but in the end I managed to come up with a list. I think that in the end I only guessed the house number of one of the addresses. The next problem was the list with all the employers I had worked for. But again, with the help of the testimonials I received over the years, this was not such a chore after all. I found an official (court) translator in Nîmes who could produce (and very quickly) a translation of the declaration of good conduct at a reasonable price.

Court translater

We only went back once to Mâcon to ask for some explanation of one of the questions, and after that everything seemed to be under control. The only thing we were waiting for were the papers from the Netherlands.
To be continued.
Click here for the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.