The saga of the missing 'e'

I'm interrupting the tale of our family trip around the spas and natural waters of Jamaica, to report on the matter of my wife's first name. All the time I've known her, her name has been Merrise (pronounced to rhyme with cerise). 'What a lovely name," I said when I first met her. 'Where does it come from?’ She gave me the 'look' - anyone who has asked a Jamaican a potentially sensitive question will know about the ‘look’, so I fell silent. Eventually she said: ‘My father called me Merrise. I think it was the name of an obscure French actress popular in the 1940s.’
Those who have only a passing acquaintance with Jamaican naming traditions will confirm that they are the most original and inventive in the world. An entire generation was named after Ken Barrington, the English cricketer who somehow took the fancy of Jamaicans during the 1950s, for example. And what about filmmaker Don Letts? His father’s first name is St Leger. So the idea of being named after an obscure French actress seemed perfectly plausible, if just a little esoteric even by Jamaican standards.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and Merrise decides to re-new her Jamaican passport. She’s held a UK passport for many years, of course, but a valid Jamaican passport is required to claim certain tax refunds, which she qualifies for as someone returning to set up a home in the country of her birth. Since 9-11, Jamaica (along with just about everywhere else) has been obliged to review its passport requirements, so the mere fact of once having held a Jamaican passport is no longer a guarantee that it will be renewed. In order to do this, she needs her original birth certificate – something she mislaid many years ago. I will not detail the labyrinthine processes involved in securing this document – several visits to the Jamaica High Commission in London (where a goodly number of the employees also specialise in the ‘look’), the Royal Courts of Justice, help from our good friend and solicitor Mike Dyer. All appeared to going well, if slowly, until last Thursday when a phone call from Jamaica spread panic. “It appears,” said a voice from the Registrar General’s office (and from the tone of the voice it was clear this was a person who could also do the ‘look’) “that your application will have to start over again because according to your original birth certificate, your first name is spelt ‘Merris’ – without an ‘e’.”
This was not just a blow because of the amount of time, money and energy already expended, but doubly so because with the container due to arrive in Kingston in a week or so, the passport was needed quickly. Failure to clear the container within five days of arrival attracts storage charges of US$200 a day.
Merrise (or, as I now call her, Merris) was so incensed that she flew into a frenzy of activity and called the Jamaican High Commission. Amazingly, someone answered the phone (anyone who has tried to call the JHC will know how unexpected this is) and, even more amazingly, she found herself talking to a very helpful woman called Anita. Thanks to her, it seems that Merris may receive her Jamaican passport before she leaves next week.
In the meantime, I’ve been doing a bit of research. I can’t find any French actresses – obscure or otherwise – with the name Merrise. There is, however, a French connection with Merris, a small town in northern France where Australian Forces distinguished themselves in a World War 1 action in 1918. Could that have been the inspiration behind her name? Even in the complex, multi-layered, post-colonial hybridity that is Merrise’s family history, that seems a bridge too far.