My friend Donna Barron has caused confusion with her last name on occasion. Attending a formal dinner with her husband, the maître d’ saw her name and stiffened.
“Oh, yes, here you go, baroness!” she said, gesturing to a table.
“And this would be the baron?” she said, looking reverently at Donna’s husband.
I would have puffed up my chest, nodded stiffly in return, and strode to my table, but Donna is more ethical than I am. She quickly clarified that, no, she was not a baroness, it was just her last name. A missed chance for a royally entertaining evening, if you ask me.
Another friend actually is a baroness, something I only found out after knowing her for many years.
“Oh, it’s no big deal,” she said, laughing and downplaying the whole thing.
She’s also American and just happened to marry a man who turned out to be a baron. As simple as that.
No, it’s not simple, at least not in Germany. While “baroness” conjures up fairy tales, castles, and swooshy dresses in my mind, here, it means much more.
She told me that when she calls her bank, she gets the royal treatment. Somehow the bank has figured out how to roll out a red carpet over the phone.
