265 OUDEGRACHT in Utrecht: apartments today, formerly a Catholic girls’ school, and before that the house where Adriaan Boeyens was born. He became Adrian VI, at the worst time ever to be elected pope, just as 300,000 copies of 95 angry theses in soft- and hardcover were going over the counter. Monk Martin Luther was the world’s first best-selling author.
For a long time, the building had a different name: Brandaa House. Named after the original builder, Dirk Van der Aa Brandtszoon. The little street next to the house is still named Brandstraat, formerly Brandsteeg. Dirk was the son of Brandt who lived by the canal. Aa, like Ee in Friesland, IJ in Amsterdam and Eau in France, is an old word for water.
All that info about the house was wrapped up in the name Brandaa. For generations the residents of the property were called accordingly, the Brandaa family. Until they emigrated to America with a group of other Utrechters a century and a half ago, then it became Brando.
Marlon junior was born in Omaha in 1924 out of Marlon Brando senior’s marriage to Dorothy Pennebaker, phoneticized from Pannebakker, a Utrecht dynasty of rooftop shingle makers. Earlier this month, D-Day was commemorated on Omaha Beach. Marlon did not join the fight. Too undisciplined. The Army had dishonorably discharged him well before then.
