Ingeborg is an Ikea product, a shower curtain !?

Not that I know ;-) Ingeborg is my first name, given to me by my father. It's a Scandinavian name, not that we have innate ties with Scandinavia. Apparently I was named after an old flame of my father, but why my mother agreed with that I have no idea. I've always thought that the name itself meant 'daughter of the castle/burgh' but all the name sites online say it means 'under protection of Ing (A Nordic deity).

There are not so many Ingeborgs in the world and most definitely I'm the only one so far who has this name in combination with my maiden name and my married name. All three together make for a feast of gutturals and rolling Rs, the 'arrgs' and 'grrs' make it very difficult for anyone but those who speak Germanic/Teutonic languages to pronounce easily. Which is why I'm usually introducing myself as Inge and leave the surnames out :-)

I'm Dutch, my parents and both sets of grandparents were Dutch too, but  the family has been living outside of The Netherlands intermittently for 4 generations now. Which is one of the reasons why I have a rather strange Kafka-esque nationality problem. My parents and sisters have been living in Italy for decades, mother and sisters and their families still do.When my father died there almost 20 years ago my mother needed official paperwork from the children, giving their details like date of birth, place of birth, address etc. I lived in The Netherlands then and went to the local council to ask for an international proof of identity and address. This was when computers had just been introduced and out rolled a document stating I was a Dutch citizen and a British subject. I was flabbergasted and rather upset. I had already lived for 40 years, graduated, married, got my drivers license, had children, moved to Singapore and back, so had been filling in official forms for decades and I knew nothing about a British nationality, it felt completely wrong, no way was I British ! I protested and got the answer: 'The computer says so '! (Little Britain had not reached The Netherlands yet !) I protested some more and out came the little cardboard card that up to the computer era registered every Dutch citizen from their birth to their death and which travelled  from council to council within The Netherlands with them when they moved.

In a little corner of the card the clerk who had written out this card when my father went to register my birth had noted that my father had two passports, a Dutch one and a British one and had apparently decided that meant I as his child had two nationalities. That British passport was because my father had been born in Singapore in the 30s when Singapore was a Crown Colony. When Singapore became independent my father had to choose to keep the British passport or get a Singapore passport, and he chose neither, but nobody asked me (I was 9 by that time and obviously we didn't know about the mix-up). And so for the Dutch authorities I kept and still have dual nationality because the computer and the card say so.

When I tried to revoke it  after finding this out they told me that I need to ask the British authorities to do that, but obviously the British authorities can't recognise me as British to revoke it (as I don't exist as British in their files), so I'm stuck, never knowing whether I will have to write down both nationalities in official papers. Argh and grr ! I so dislike red tape !

All this personal stuff and a picture of a childhood piccie of little Ingeborg (my grandmother used to call me Borgje, little Borg then, Startrek didn't exist yet !) thanks to MonoMonday , our host Dollykgray wanted to know more about our Blipnames :-) Thanks very much, Dolly, it's great fun reading all the other entries !

And thanks very much for your kind comments, stars and even a heart for yesterday's green hope Blip