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important to note that Freud’s mother’s name, Amalia, is phonetically very similar to “Amme”;
certainly she must have been called “mama” often, and “Amme and “mama” are quite close.
But this peasant woman would have spoken Czech exclusively, and this would have been the language used with the children. The customary Czech name for such a woman is “Nana,” which is one of the most frequent variants of the name “Anna.”134 That is, “Nana” is both the popular Czech equivalent for “Nanny,” and also one of the popular nicknames for Anna. Therefore, “Anna”” and “Nana” are in the case of a nanny inextricably connected. This use of “Nana” is documented as especially typical of Moravia.135 “Nana” is obviously an analogue to the English “Nanny,” which is itself a variant of the name “Anne.” Apparently Anne or Anna, the grandmother of Jesus, became a widely used word for a mother substitute. If the actual grandmother had been the nanny, she would probably have been called “Nana”; otherwise she may have been called “Anna.”136 Both words are very close in sound, and even if “Anna” was not used, “Nana” is quite similar. No wonder Freud was drawn to Leonardo’s painting of Anne (Anna), Mary (Maria), and Jesus! Even the name of the older, preferred second mother in the painting was the same as that of his own older second mother. To make the analysis of Leonardo’s painting even more over determined, “Maria” has sound similarity to “Amalia.” (And it should be recalled that Maria Freud, the young wife of Emanuel, was also part of Freud’s Freiberg years.137 One might also wonder whether Freud knew in an earlier version of the painting, Leonardo also included young John the Baptist, thus bringing Freud’s half-nephew (“cousin”) John into the “associative picture.”138 Freud’s biographers have often noted the life-long influence of John on Freud’s life. In the final version, as shown in Figure 1-4, a lamb was substituted for John. Some of the possible associations to “lamb” have already been noted. One concluding remark about the name “Anna” is in order. It should be noted that Freud declared that the names of his own six children were “chosen, not according to the fashion of the moment, but in memory of people I have been fond of. Their names made the children into revenants.”131 With the word “revenant,” Freud was referring to his belief that a name results in the recreation (almost the reincarnation) of the previous person with the name. The only child of Sigmund Freud who received a decidedly Christian name was his daughter Anna, who was also Freud’s favorite child. By one of those ironies of life, it was his daughter Anna who was to become Freud’s nurse — his “Nana-Anna” — in the long illness of his later years. |