Makemakean
Mr Makemean
- Pronouns
- Logical, unlike those in German
The name Oscar or Oskar has been very popular in Sweden since the 19th century. Only reason why it ever became popular was because we had two Kings by that name, the second named after the first, and the first was only named Oscar by random chance.
At the time Oscar was born, his father, the future King Charles XIV John of Sweden, was still Maréchal Jean-Bapiste Bernadotte of the First French Republic, and this grandson of a shoemaker from just north of the Pyrenees had no idea that within just a decade, he would be proclaimed heir to the Swedish throne, that too by a bizarre coincidence. Anyway, Bernadotte decided it was politic to flatter his benefactor when it came to the naming of his firstborn son, and so asked Napoléon Bonaparte (who still wouldn't be emperor for another couple of years), what name he thought appropriate. At the time, Bonaparte had been reading the Ossian poems (which were later to be revealed as forgeries, of course), and so suggested the name Oscar, which appears in the great Irish epic. And Bernadotte of course went ahead with the choice.
In the Emigrant novels by Vilhelm Moberg from the middle of the 20th century (though set in the middle of the 19th), the main character is a fellow by the name of Karl-Oskar, who is an impoverished Smålandian farmer who eventually finds himself forced to emigrate to Minnesota in order to be able to feed his family.
In any other timeline, the notion that a 19th century impoverished Swedish farmer would be named Oskar would appear absolutely absurd, no less than if he had been named Odysseus or Macbeth.
At the time Oscar was born, his father, the future King Charles XIV John of Sweden, was still Maréchal Jean-Bapiste Bernadotte of the First French Republic, and this grandson of a shoemaker from just north of the Pyrenees had no idea that within just a decade, he would be proclaimed heir to the Swedish throne, that too by a bizarre coincidence. Anyway, Bernadotte decided it was politic to flatter his benefactor when it came to the naming of his firstborn son, and so asked Napoléon Bonaparte (who still wouldn't be emperor for another couple of years), what name he thought appropriate. At the time, Bonaparte had been reading the Ossian poems (which were later to be revealed as forgeries, of course), and so suggested the name Oscar, which appears in the great Irish epic. And Bernadotte of course went ahead with the choice.
In the Emigrant novels by Vilhelm Moberg from the middle of the 20th century (though set in the middle of the 19th), the main character is a fellow by the name of Karl-Oskar, who is an impoverished Smålandian farmer who eventually finds himself forced to emigrate to Minnesota in order to be able to feed his family.
In any other timeline, the notion that a 19th century impoverished Swedish farmer would be named Oskar would appear absolutely absurd, no less than if he had been named Odysseus or Macbeth.