What's in a name? The origins of wertperch.
"Wert perch, ma frund!"
Over the years many people have asked me what my username means. They equate it with the fish perch, they ask if I was a fish in a former life. It's a puzzle to everyone, and I've tended to smile mysteriously to myself and say nothing. But at last, the tale can be, must be told.
It was never a nickname, yet it begins, as with so many nicknames, at school. I have been to many schools over the years, and attracted many names. "Yank" at boarding school, "Cabbage" at secondary school, and finally, at my grammar school I got "Wes" or "Wes'l". But that is not my username, you say, and you're correct.
The grammar school drew its pupils from two sources: one was the provincial town of Downham Market and its environs, the other was RAF Marham which was a sizeable source of kids. We (I was an RAF brat) were bussed in each day to the school whose population was predominantly locals. The year I joined (at age fourteen) there was a local cadre of kids who had a peculiarly local take on the Norfolk dialect, deliberately mangling words and exaggerating pronunciation. This argot extended into various phrases that took on a life of their own. Nicknames were often based in the lingo, and mine was from weasel because all the good animal names were gone. I remember little enough of the language, but there is one phrase that stuck in my mind. This was the greeting "wert perch", often used in conjunction with "ma frund". It was popular even outside our year, so you'd occasionally hear it from first-years and sixth-formers alike.
I think it was the third year I was there, in the Lower Sixth (I'd have been sixteen) that our Geography class had a field trip to Malham in North Yorkshire. Part of our preparation was to mess with the locals, and given that most of the kids thought the Yorkshire dialect was impenetrable, thought that our schoolkid language was as good a way as any of doing that. So a plan was hatched. We ordered a number of orange t-shirts printed "WERT PERCH", one for each of us in the class. Every time we went out as a group we'd wear the shirts, and speak the lingo. Given that we were staying in a popular youth hostel with a number of international visitors, there was a good deal of opportunity to tease others.
It was highly successful. The locals thought we were foreigners (even more foreign than Norfolk) and the others (mostly European and a smattering of 'merkins) couldn't work it out either. Was it a band name? No. An anagram? No. A town? No. We'd gab in a mix of English and gibberish to one another and laugh at everyone. I don't think we ever explained it and left it a mystery. Mischief managed.
I kept that shirt for over twenty years. It went missing when my second wife and I separated. I can still close my eyes and see it, and occasionally I wonder if it was ripped up for rags. That would be the most ignominious ending for something with so much meaning to me now.
When I began my online life and realised that I needed a handle, it was a natural move. So I became wertperch. Oh, I'm sorry, what does it mean? I've teased you all by noding wert and rubberlip surfperch, but the time is come. It simply means "hello, dog"¹.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
¹ Probably from "wotcher, pooch". It's entirely unclear.
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