One simple thing I take pleasure from at the end of each month is to look at what search terms people use to find my web site. They’re mostly about programming or Japanese, not to mention “what language is this?“, but in March I noticed some funny queries regarding my last name “Falck“.
These three were my favorites:
- how do you pronounce falck
- kanji falck
- how to falck my self
The first two of which I consider myself competent to answer.
Falck ending in ‘ck’ is a fancier spelling of the word ‘falk’, which is also a surname, and is the Scandinavian cognate word for the English ‘falcon’. So a falk, and thus a falck, is a falcon. Falk and Falck are not very common but not too rare either last names in especially Denmark and Sweden, but also Norway and Finland. Falck is considerably less common than Falk.
Many Scandinavians probably associate Falck with the Danish company Falck A/S, who run rescue services, ambulances, security services, etc.
Falck, as well as falk, is pronounced with a short, pure, basic vowel sound that is spelt with an ‘a’ in all sane European languages. The Japanese あ is the same sound. For English analogy, it’s like the ‘u’ in ‘up’. So it’s not pronounced as ‘folk’ – the vowel sound is different and shorter. The ‘f’ is like you’d expect in English, and the ‘lk’ is pronounced like I think many Americans would pronounce it in ‘folk’ as well, but not like most Brits who pronounce ‘folk’ the same way as they pronounce ‘fork’. In other words, you can distinctly hear both the ‘l’ and the ‘k’. And it shouldn’t be confused with ‘Flack’.
Falck in kanji, i.e. the Japanese characters based on Chinese characters, as well as of course how to spell falk in kanji, depends of course a little bit on what kind of falcon you’re thinking of. I’ve always used 隼 to spell my name in kanji when it’s needed (or just for fun). Most often that’s when I’m hung over ordering pizza online and the web form absolutely insists that you enter your name as both kanji and reading (katakana/hiragana). So when when the pizza arrives, the receipt has my name as “隼 変陸” – and it has never failed.
Anyway, the kanji 隼 is read as hayabusa in Japanese and means peregrine falcon. I think the peregrine falcon is probably the coolest falcon out there, so it fits me well. Hayabusa is also the name of a space probe and a motorcycle, among other things. Here is the kanji for falcon and thus also falck/falk as a jpeg:
Feel free to print it out and bring it to your neighborhood tattooist for a cool falck/falk/falcon kanji tattoo! If you do use it to get some ink done, I humbly request that you include a link back to my site in the tattoo.
