When I came to England forty years ago, they changed my name to Aleksander John because they couldn’t pronounce Mežek. I was fine with that because “John” means “Janez”, which was my father’s name.
 
By the end of the Eighties, during the creation of Podarimo srcu (A Gift to the Heart), the translated name was no longer good enough, I wanted my own IDENTITY and every Slovene at the time felt the same.
 
When we got a collective punch in the face from our brotherly comrades, the only solution was to wake up, not in any IDEN-TITO or IDEN-TITSH but in an independent country with own IDENTITY which no longer needs translation. Happy 20th anniversary, Slovenia!