How many times do you get asked how to pronounce it? Came to see you do a reading/q and a here in England once and there was a very irritating, loud woman who put her hand up and asked "the one question everyone in this room wants to ask is how the hell you pronounce your name?"I wanted to throttle her - ask a question and THAT'S what you choose?! I gave you a gift at the end, then felt stupid about it on the walk home as I felt like a 'fan-boy'! She probably went home feeling full of confidence!
My grandfather's Polish family added Pol to Castro when they immigrated. Apparently their reaction to all of the anti-Polish sentiment at the time was to go big and shout their ethnicity from the rooftops like a big middle finger. (At least that's the reasoning I'm telling myself since they're all dead too.)
I had a Ukrainian friend who was a fan of yours and she pronounced it "Paula-NYOOK". My dad's parents were also from Poland and my name has been similarly Anglicized (actual: "ME-hall-ACK"; we say "MISH-uh-LACK" because that's how Canadians read it).
A friend of mine introduced herself as Ras, pronounced “Ross” like from Friends not “Roz” like from Frasier. From then on, I associated her personality with prime time television. A caricature of herself. I never forgot how to pronounce her name, though.
I love this kind of story, Пане Паланюк (Mr. Palahniuk).
When you are a little kid, viewing the world through inexperienced eyes, there are certain things that don't register; differences that go unnoticed. When you are running around with your friends in the playground at primary school, you don't see black and white, poor and rich, foreign and native. You just see people.
Growing up I had a friend called Dimitri Kontogiannis. We became mates in reception class, at the age of five. I used to go round his house to play, and would stay and eat dinner, joined at the table by his two little brothers Yannis and Markos, both of whom had the same olive skin and dark features as their brother. Dimitri's dad was a tall, dark man with a thick moustache, who spoke with a strong accent. His name was Angelo and he worked on the ships. Obviously this is a Greek family; the clues were there! Yet it wasn't until I was about ten or eleven that I knew Dimitri’s family to be any different to any other in the neighbourhood. Even the name Dimitri Kontogiannis never seemed foreign to me. He was just my mate Dimitri.
I had another good friend in primary school called Tunde. He lived just round the corner from me, and most days our families would walk to school together; Tunde and I running ahead passing a football between ourselves, while our mums walked behind with our little siblings. Tunde was black. Both of his parents were white. I never noticed this; or if I did, I never questioned it; never asked my mum, 'How did two white people have a black baby?'
It wasn't that I felt it rude to ask; it just never seemed out of the ordinary; he called his parents mum and dad, so as far as I was concerned they were his mum and dad. When we were 11 Tunde went away. One day he was here, the next gone. But his mum and dad still lived round the corner and they had a couple of new sons, also black, and of school age. I asked how this couple had seemingly given birth to two 5-year old non-identical twins, and learnt that Tunde's mum and dad were foster parents who took in young African children in need of a loving home. Tunde had gone to be reunited with members of his birth family.
Years later, when we were teenagers, every now and then Tunde would appear unexpectedly in the local park and join our game of football as he came back to visit his second family.
There were other differences that I failed to clock growing-up; differences closer to home. Like how my mum's maiden name, Rayiru, didn't sound like it originated in the London that she grew up in. Nor did it register that my grandad's skin was darker than ours; that it was light brown. He spoke with a strong London accent and we never saw him as having anything foreign about him. He was called Kris - Krissy to his friends and family - and it was him that I was named after. I never wondered why we spelt our name with a K, or why Kris wasn't short for anything, like Christopher, or Christian; it was just Kris. It never seemed strange, either, when grandad talked about his brothers, Ramsay, Raja, Ranji and Rama.
I never had any questions about the turban-wearing Indian man in the black and white photo that hung on our living-room wall with all the other family snaps. I knew who he was; sure, he was my great grandad who had died before I was born. But I never knew his name. And it never clicked that if this Indian man was my great grandfather, then Indian blood also ran through my veins.
Then one night, not long after turning 30, I had a vivid dream. I was in India, in a coastal village with a deserted sandy beach and a beautiful turquoise sea. I was being introduced to people, left, right and centre and I was happy; so was everyone else. I had Delhi Belly and was constantly aware of exactly how far away I was from the nearest toilet, but it didn’t dampen my spirits. Tables of food lined the main path through the village; dishes emanating the most delicious aromas, as people offered me samplings of biryani and fish curry. Despite the condition of my guts, I tried heaped spoons of everything. It was all delicious! I was enveloped inside a feeling of utter tranquillity; one of being at home. I didn't want to leave. The dream ended on the beach, as I walked along the shoreline, feet in the water.
Two nights later the dream returned; this time it was even more vivid. After waking up, I was in no doubt as to what it meant: I was being called to India, to discover my roots. But which part of India was I being called to? I had no idea where in that huge country my great grandfather had come from.
To cut a long story short (I know what you’re thinking: too late for that!) a friend of mine who practiced genealogy helped me find out some stuff, such as my great grandfather’s first name, Rama. And also that my grandad, whom I had only ever known as Krissy, had anglicised his name from Krishna (I’m named after Krishna, the Hindu god. WTF!!)
Rama was one of those old-school immigrants who moved to a country, adapted and integrated, started a family, never spoke a word about his past life, brought his kids up in the culture of the land of their birth and then returned to his homeland at the end of it all to see out his final years. Because of this, no one seems to know too much about him.
I did learn that he was born in the south-western state of Kerala in 1893, and grew up next to the sea. I didn’t know this information when I had those dreams, but when I started exploring Kerala on the internet, I couldn’t believe how much the beaches resembled those my subconscious had conjured up.
According to documents, Rama’s profession was actor and dancer. He came to England by sea in 1926 to perform, and later that same year he married his English fiancée, also a dancer and stage performer, and they had kids and the rest is history.
Years later, with Rama in his 60s and in failing health, he and my great grandmother returned "home" to Kerala in India, where a house next to the beach was built in which they could live out their final years together. Rama died there in 1969 at the age of 76.
Now that I knew all this, I was sure that the dream meant I had to go there. And so I did. Except, the thing is, I have ADHD. Off the scales ADHD. Which means I made no plans at all, just jumped on a plane (dragged my wife along for the ride), jumped on some trains until we found ourselves in the jungle. Jumped in a rickshaw and rode further into the jungle. Then realised I had zero clue wtf I was doing. I was just lost in a jungle in India, with my wife, in a rickshaw.
I didn’t find any relatives. I did get a bad case of Delhi Belly. And a story. Thanks ADHD.
Kris, where do you think this dream came from? Could it be memories in your DNA, or maybe a past life? Was it your imagination generating the entire story based on your life experiences up to that point? It could also be some sort of energy or spiritual connection you had with this ancestor. Thank you for sharing this story with us. I find dreams fascinating because we currently understand so little of the human mind.
Hi Snowflake, you damn libtard snowflake! :D I have to lay my cards on the table, I'm not a big believer in past lives or anything "spirit." You can blame that on growing up with a mother who believed (believes) herself to be a trance medium and dragged me around spiritualist churches when I was growing up. So I can't say it was anything like that. But then, who knows? I don't.
I was smoking a lot of green at the time. Meditating as well. And had also recently watched an episode (stoned) of Who Do You Think You Are, in which a British (of Indian heritage) celebrity by the name of Meera Sial - a wonderfully funny, talented woman, by the way - went on a journey to the Punjab and found out the story of her ancestors. I loved the episode greatly. So who knows, this may have planted something in my subconscious. But as for the details, being on the beach etc... I really couldn't tell you. As you rightly say, we understand so little of the human mind.
When I found myself (in real life) on the beaches on Kerala, it was amazing how familiar it all felt. I mean, really fkn familiar!
No, unfortunately my life as a libertarian working next to CHAZ-ghanistan hasn't been productive in generating any long-term romantic relationships. I have in fact, gotten alot of great stories from dating and talking to people. It's funny how people think that a 4-5 hour conversation with someone on a date means that you are meant to be together. Little do they know, that it all mostly serves my desire to collect stories from people. It seems, from what I have read on here, that it is actually a useful writing tool. I feel like the more I find out about other people leads me to find out more about myself.
Too bad about your mother dragging you around to stuff. To me, it just seems like some people are just trying to give meaning to chaos and the unknown.
In case anyone's interested, here's a video, shot by my wife from the back of the rickshaw, that captures the moment it all sunk in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUKBbeZ_tPY
In the 70s there was an "STP" campaign. It set out to Stop Teenage Pregnancy. My sister, Shawn's initials were STP and she was mortified. As if the motor oil wasn't bad enough.
Nick, I have heard it all with my last name. I think you just have to go with it as a kid and an adult. Did Michalak ever produce any choice adolescent insults or rhymes?
As soon as the heard that rhyme about me, aged 10, in the school hall, I was mortified. Because I knew it was an absolute belter and wasn't going to be forgotten. Ever. By anyone.
The kid who improvised it was the same age as me but a lot bigger. My instant retort, without thinking of course, was "At least my dad's not dead. Dead daddy! Dead daddy! Dead daddy!"
The kid's dad had recently died. Needless to say, the kid snapped and administered to me a much deserved kicking. While the teacher watched.
Yup. I think it was 5th or 6th grade when kids pointed out my name backwards was "Anal" and that my last name rhymed with "Pooper." After awhile, I just came to own it and really leaned hard into scat humor. Still do to this day.
They made me this way! **insert maniacal laughter and thunder clap**
The most surprising and quickly passed over part of this story is that Cean Chaffin feels the need to explain the pronunciation of Chaffin but not Cean.
Hey Chuck, you were going to be at the Yorkshire thought bubble comic con this November (I heard that you canceled), are there any other places you're going to be in Europe these next few months?
Yes, alas. I'm itching to travel, but the pandemic panic gave me cold feet. My only plans are to fly to Austin, TX Oct. 26 to talk to Joe Rogan. If I survive I'll make more plans.
For a while I pronounced it Puh-laaaawww-nyik. As usual, I was complicating the easy.
My parents are the same age so growing up I thought that was the rule: married people were always born the same year.
I also remember addressing an envelope to “Grandma” to put in the mail, and my mom told me “That won’t work. That’s not her name,” and I just stood there stunned for a moment.
That might have been the first time that I heard her name was Marie, which was also confusing because everyone called her Stevie. I was a very befuddled five-year-old.
My mother was born Constance but had it legally changed to Chatty. 🤣 Guess the ladies had a lot of extra time on their hands to sit around and dream up new names.
The way I've been told, is that my grandmother (who had a luxurious name for a poor farmer: Lydia Emma Redwine Bellamy) became a bit of a flapper in the 20s and moved to the big city of Dallas. Her brother-in-law would tease her because of her short hair and called her "Bobbie," and it stuck for so long that it's on her headstone.
My funny story regarding this comes with a caveat: It's way funnier if you can hear the accent.
A friend of mine and I went to a random "junk" shop in Dallas (where we lived at the time). She's a bubbly, intelligent hippy-type and wanted to see what was in this place. It's in an old house that looks like incense smells and is full of scratched records, weed pipes, crazy art, and décor that was curated by someone looking for the weirdest stuff in the thrift store.
At first no one is there. Then we hear someone coming from the back and a pint size Japanese man with long hair and a long flowing coat comes out of the hallway with a glass of red wine. His accent is incredibly thick, which we found out was because he'd only lived in America for 8 years at that point. We talked with him about Japan, life, music, etc. for so long that he made us drink wine with him.
He gave us his business card that said, "Jimmy Fukushita" and said, "Fu-ku-shi-ta. It's like a fuckin' shit!" and began cackling.
My friend moved to Hawaii the next month but every time she came to town we made a pilgrimage to Jimmy's place, wine in hand.
As a kid, I enjoyed playing my Nintendo games. On the rare chance that I beat one, I was rewarded with the credits. A name I would look for would be something like Kyoko Yamashita. Then I would laugh at the name because it had the word shit in it.
Later on as an adult living in Japan, I found myself living in the town of Iwakuni. This is in Yamaguchi prefecture on the main island of Honshu. "Yama" means mountain and "Guchi" is entrance. This is something I found out by being an illiterate person in Japan. All of this while trying to figure out how to read their ideogram language. This helped me understand that Yamashita means one who lives under the mountain. If younger me had know that, maybe I would have been like wow, that is the one that shits on the mountain.
"Fuku" means good fortune so maybe "Fukushita" means person under good fortune or something similar. I find learning about other languages to be a fascinating experience even though I struggle with the pronunciation of all of them.
Entertaining edit: I forgot. It wasn't "Jimmy," it was "Jimi" because he was once in a Jimi Hendrix cover band, so when he came to the States, that's the name he chose.
Over 20 years ago, before cell phones, before caller ID, answering phones was an experience, but from time to time you would receive the telemarketer. After hello your greeted with "Yes Sir, may I speak with Mr. Lonregren?" As if they just spooned in some tapioca. "Lonergan" (Law-ner(like nerd)-gin(like begin) Lonergan. "Yes Mr. Lonegrin, I am calling today on behaf- "Lonergan" I'd say cutting off their well rehearsed spiel. After a pause they'd say "Lonnegan?" I'd repeat "Lonergan" they'd say "Logran' again, "Lonergan" and they'd say "Lonergan"? "Yes, Lonergan" then, I'd hang up the phone.
Years later I read that some prisons has call centers for prisoners to work in. I read that and imagined, some disgruntled ex-con, was going to show up at my house, I'd answer the door and just before I get pummeled, the con would look at me, then with the most precise pronunciation they say, "Lonergan."
I would have never known that you and I are related if it weren’t for two recent discoveries—a DNA test six months ago and your post. Until recently, my father’s ancestry was a complete mystery. We knew he was half Hawaiian and half European, but the rest was mist and legend due to the guarded circumstances of his adoption.
My sister and I spun tales that Dad was the product of a Hawaiian prostitute abducted by the Nazis for eugenic experiments. That’s how we explained that my father tested with an IQ of 200 as a child in Hawaii, was given a full scholarship to MIT, did his graduate studies at Stanford, and invented the math coprocessor (a critical component to the first personal computers). These days, dear old dad is a complete recluse and spends his waking hours working on the Millennium Prize problems.
That wild (and slightly true) tale was swept away when I located my half-aunt on Ancestry.com. Through our joint research, we discovered that my actual grandfather was Walther (Wladig) Demchuk. Walter’s family emigrated to Canada from the village of Rudka on the Polish/Ukraine border somewhere around 1900.
My grandfather, Walter, ran away from home, falsified his enlistment papers, and joined the Coast Guard when he was only 15-years-old. While stationed in Honolulu in 1942, he met my grandmother, Dolly Kaniho. Walther and Dolly got pregnant.
Dolly, a dance hall girl, rejected her strict Hawaiian nationalist family’s life plans, but she did agree to give up my father for adoption. The whole Hawaiian side of the story is equally fascinating, but I’ll save that for my own blog. (In short, the Kanihos are a huge family of Hawaiian politicians and religious leaders.) As I’ve said, I’ve only known all this for less than a year and I grew up knowing nothing about my Ukrainian heritage.
Mind blown! According to my family tree, it appears that there we several Demchuk/Palahniuk marriages. For example, Anastasia Palahniuk married Joseph Demchuk around 1885 back in the Ukraine.
When Chuck and I first became friends 20 years ago he would call me on the phone and he’d always say, “Hey, it’s Chuck…Palahniuk.” This went on for two years. He was the only Chuck I knew. And also I had caller ID. Now I understand that he was just training me to say his name.
Hah! For the entire thirty years I was repped by Donadio & Olson I called and announced myself the same way. It seemed arrogant to assume people would know who "Chuck" was. Frankly, I have no idea how to do this job. Remember the TV show 'Rhoda'? I always feel like Carlton, saying, "This is Carlton your doorman."
The plot thickens! It's encouraging to hear that you figure it out as you go. It probably made it endearing when you called or left a question. If I meet someone new I just tell them All-over-Rock. Now that I think of it that sounds like the description at a murder scene. The victim's brains are-
Okay Chelsea, you might appreciate this. As a small child, before I knew my dead grandfather's name, I always wanted to change my first name to Nick. Coincidence? When friends have seen the photo of Grandpa Nick, they get spooked because he and I look so similar. And yeah, he's the one who went crazy. What does "phenotype" mean?
Here in the Cincinnati area we have a Chief of Police for a city called Loveland with the last name of Rahe. There’s a park along a river named after one of his ancestors and his family used to run a food distribution company. I knew the chief when we were teenagers and he revealed that the name wasn’t always pronounced like it was a parcel of sunshine. His ancestors switched out the third letter, a “P,” for obvious reasons.
How many times do you get asked how to pronounce it? Came to see you do a reading/q and a here in England once and there was a very irritating, loud woman who put her hand up and asked "the one question everyone in this room wants to ask is how the hell you pronounce your name?"I wanted to throttle her - ask a question and THAT'S what you choose?! I gave you a gift at the end, then felt stupid about it on the walk home as I felt like a 'fan-boy'! She probably went home feeling full of confidence!
My grandfather's Polish family added Pol to Castro when they immigrated. Apparently their reaction to all of the anti-Polish sentiment at the time was to go big and shout their ethnicity from the rooftops like a big middle finger. (At least that's the reasoning I'm telling myself since they're all dead too.)
I had a Ukrainian friend who was a fan of yours and she pronounced it "Paula-NYOOK". My dad's parents were also from Poland and my name has been similarly Anglicized (actual: "ME-hall-ACK"; we say "MISH-uh-LACK" because that's how Canadians read it).
also, I tend to associate -uk suffixes with Ukrainian ancestry and -ak with Polish. Just checked Wikipedia, -uk didn't make the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_name_suffixes
A friend of mine introduced herself as Ras, pronounced “Ross” like from Friends not “Roz” like from Frasier. From then on, I associated her personality with prime time television. A caricature of herself. I never forgot how to pronounce her name, though.
I knew you were Ukrainian my family also comes from that region.
Mothers maiden name is Ivonyuk.
I love this kind of story, Пане Паланюк (Mr. Palahniuk).
When you are a little kid, viewing the world through inexperienced eyes, there are certain things that don't register; differences that go unnoticed. When you are running around with your friends in the playground at primary school, you don't see black and white, poor and rich, foreign and native. You just see people.
Growing up I had a friend called Dimitri Kontogiannis. We became mates in reception class, at the age of five. I used to go round his house to play, and would stay and eat dinner, joined at the table by his two little brothers Yannis and Markos, both of whom had the same olive skin and dark features as their brother. Dimitri's dad was a tall, dark man with a thick moustache, who spoke with a strong accent. His name was Angelo and he worked on the ships. Obviously this is a Greek family; the clues were there! Yet it wasn't until I was about ten or eleven that I knew Dimitri’s family to be any different to any other in the neighbourhood. Even the name Dimitri Kontogiannis never seemed foreign to me. He was just my mate Dimitri.
I had another good friend in primary school called Tunde. He lived just round the corner from me, and most days our families would walk to school together; Tunde and I running ahead passing a football between ourselves, while our mums walked behind with our little siblings. Tunde was black. Both of his parents were white. I never noticed this; or if I did, I never questioned it; never asked my mum, 'How did two white people have a black baby?'
It wasn't that I felt it rude to ask; it just never seemed out of the ordinary; he called his parents mum and dad, so as far as I was concerned they were his mum and dad. When we were 11 Tunde went away. One day he was here, the next gone. But his mum and dad still lived round the corner and they had a couple of new sons, also black, and of school age. I asked how this couple had seemingly given birth to two 5-year old non-identical twins, and learnt that Tunde's mum and dad were foster parents who took in young African children in need of a loving home. Tunde had gone to be reunited with members of his birth family.
Years later, when we were teenagers, every now and then Tunde would appear unexpectedly in the local park and join our game of football as he came back to visit his second family.
There were other differences that I failed to clock growing-up; differences closer to home. Like how my mum's maiden name, Rayiru, didn't sound like it originated in the London that she grew up in. Nor did it register that my grandad's skin was darker than ours; that it was light brown. He spoke with a strong London accent and we never saw him as having anything foreign about him. He was called Kris - Krissy to his friends and family - and it was him that I was named after. I never wondered why we spelt our name with a K, or why Kris wasn't short for anything, like Christopher, or Christian; it was just Kris. It never seemed strange, either, when grandad talked about his brothers, Ramsay, Raja, Ranji and Rama.
I never had any questions about the turban-wearing Indian man in the black and white photo that hung on our living-room wall with all the other family snaps. I knew who he was; sure, he was my great grandad who had died before I was born. But I never knew his name. And it never clicked that if this Indian man was my great grandfather, then Indian blood also ran through my veins.
Then one night, not long after turning 30, I had a vivid dream. I was in India, in a coastal village with a deserted sandy beach and a beautiful turquoise sea. I was being introduced to people, left, right and centre and I was happy; so was everyone else. I had Delhi Belly and was constantly aware of exactly how far away I was from the nearest toilet, but it didn’t dampen my spirits. Tables of food lined the main path through the village; dishes emanating the most delicious aromas, as people offered me samplings of biryani and fish curry. Despite the condition of my guts, I tried heaped spoons of everything. It was all delicious! I was enveloped inside a feeling of utter tranquillity; one of being at home. I didn't want to leave. The dream ended on the beach, as I walked along the shoreline, feet in the water.
Two nights later the dream returned; this time it was even more vivid. After waking up, I was in no doubt as to what it meant: I was being called to India, to discover my roots. But which part of India was I being called to? I had no idea where in that huge country my great grandfather had come from.
To cut a long story short (I know what you’re thinking: too late for that!) a friend of mine who practiced genealogy helped me find out some stuff, such as my great grandfather’s first name, Rama. And also that my grandad, whom I had only ever known as Krissy, had anglicised his name from Krishna (I’m named after Krishna, the Hindu god. WTF!!)
Rama was one of those old-school immigrants who moved to a country, adapted and integrated, started a family, never spoke a word about his past life, brought his kids up in the culture of the land of their birth and then returned to his homeland at the end of it all to see out his final years. Because of this, no one seems to know too much about him.
I did learn that he was born in the south-western state of Kerala in 1893, and grew up next to the sea. I didn’t know this information when I had those dreams, but when I started exploring Kerala on the internet, I couldn’t believe how much the beaches resembled those my subconscious had conjured up.
According to documents, Rama’s profession was actor and dancer. He came to England by sea in 1926 to perform, and later that same year he married his English fiancée, also a dancer and stage performer, and they had kids and the rest is history.
Years later, with Rama in his 60s and in failing health, he and my great grandmother returned "home" to Kerala in India, where a house next to the beach was built in which they could live out their final years together. Rama died there in 1969 at the age of 76.
Now that I knew all this, I was sure that the dream meant I had to go there. And so I did. Except, the thing is, I have ADHD. Off the scales ADHD. Which means I made no plans at all, just jumped on a plane (dragged my wife along for the ride), jumped on some trains until we found ourselves in the jungle. Jumped in a rickshaw and rode further into the jungle. Then realised I had zero clue wtf I was doing. I was just lost in a jungle in India, with my wife, in a rickshaw.
I didn’t find any relatives. I did get a bad case of Delhi Belly. And a story. Thanks ADHD.
Kris, where do you think this dream came from? Could it be memories in your DNA, or maybe a past life? Was it your imagination generating the entire story based on your life experiences up to that point? It could also be some sort of energy or spiritual connection you had with this ancestor. Thank you for sharing this story with us. I find dreams fascinating because we currently understand so little of the human mind.
Hi Snowflake, you damn libtard snowflake! :D I have to lay my cards on the table, I'm not a big believer in past lives or anything "spirit." You can blame that on growing up with a mother who believed (believes) herself to be a trance medium and dragged me around spiritualist churches when I was growing up. So I can't say it was anything like that. But then, who knows? I don't.
I was smoking a lot of green at the time. Meditating as well. And had also recently watched an episode (stoned) of Who Do You Think You Are, in which a British (of Indian heritage) celebrity by the name of Meera Sial - a wonderfully funny, talented woman, by the way - went on a journey to the Punjab and found out the story of her ancestors. I loved the episode greatly. So who knows, this may have planted something in my subconscious. But as for the details, being on the beach etc... I really couldn't tell you. As you rightly say, we understand so little of the human mind.
When I found myself (in real life) on the beaches on Kerala, it was amazing how familiar it all felt. I mean, really fkn familiar!
Kris! Did you just assume my politics?
Yowza, yowza, yowza! XD
No, unfortunately my life as a libertarian working next to CHAZ-ghanistan hasn't been productive in generating any long-term romantic relationships. I have in fact, gotten alot of great stories from dating and talking to people. It's funny how people think that a 4-5 hour conversation with someone on a date means that you are meant to be together. Little do they know, that it all mostly serves my desire to collect stories from people. It seems, from what I have read on here, that it is actually a useful writing tool. I feel like the more I find out about other people leads me to find out more about myself.
Too bad about your mother dragging you around to stuff. To me, it just seems like some people are just trying to give meaning to chaos and the unknown.
In case anyone's interested, here's a video, shot by my wife from the back of the rickshaw, that captures the moment it all sunk in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUKBbeZ_tPY
you wrote something about "Chuck Palahniuk, suck my dick." Very useful.
In the 70s there was an "STP" campaign. It set out to Stop Teenage Pregnancy. My sister, Shawn's initials were STP and she was mortified. As if the motor oil wasn't bad enough.
Stupid bitch
Louis CK has a bit about how kids are genuises at turning people's names into derogatory rhymes.
Nick, I have heard it all with my last name. I think you just have to go with it as a kid and an adult. Did Michalak ever produce any choice adolescent insults or rhymes?
Kris Mole
Lives in a hole
His mum's a fat slag
And his dad's on the dole
Remember it well.
That is disturbingly beautiful. Thank you.
A couple years after high school I heard that a couple of people I had considered friends at the time called me "Itchy-sack". Not bad.
You gotta admire the creativity.
As soon as the heard that rhyme about me, aged 10, in the school hall, I was mortified. Because I knew it was an absolute belter and wasn't going to be forgotten. Ever. By anyone.
The kid who improvised it was the same age as me but a lot bigger. My instant retort, without thinking of course, was "At least my dad's not dead. Dead daddy! Dead daddy! Dead daddy!"
The kid's dad had recently died. Needless to say, the kid snapped and administered to me a much deserved kicking. While the teacher watched.
Yup. I think it was 5th or 6th grade when kids pointed out my name backwards was "Anal" and that my last name rhymed with "Pooper." After awhile, I just came to own it and really leaned hard into scat humor. Still do to this day.
They made me this way! **insert maniacal laughter and thunder clap**
At least your surname isn't Drahrepus.
The most surprising and quickly passed over part of this story is that Cean Chaffin feels the need to explain the pronunciation of Chaffin but not Cean.
It'd be like if Chuck introduced himself as "Chuck Palahniuk. That's Chuck as in fuck."
I know! But it made me like her instantly.
Hey Chuck, you were going to be at the Yorkshire thought bubble comic con this November (I heard that you canceled), are there any other places you're going to be in Europe these next few months?
Yes, alas. I'm itching to travel, but the pandemic panic gave me cold feet. My only plans are to fly to Austin, TX Oct. 26 to talk to Joe Rogan. If I survive I'll make more plans.
For a while I pronounced it Puh-laaaawww-nyik. As usual, I was complicating the easy.
My parents are the same age so growing up I thought that was the rule: married people were always born the same year.
I also remember addressing an envelope to “Grandma” to put in the mail, and my mom told me “That won’t work. That’s not her name,” and I just stood there stunned for a moment.
"Well what is it, mom? Grannie? Meemaw?"
That might have been the first time that I heard her name was Marie, which was also confusing because everyone called her Stevie. I was a very befuddled five-year-old.
That's funny! My grandmother was Lydia, but EVERYONE called her Bobbie.
My mother was born Constance but had it legally changed to Chatty. 🤣 Guess the ladies had a lot of extra time on their hands to sit around and dream up new names.
The way I've been told, is that my grandmother (who had a luxurious name for a poor farmer: Lydia Emma Redwine Bellamy) became a bit of a flapper in the 20s and moved to the big city of Dallas. Her brother-in-law would tease her because of her short hair and called her "Bobbie," and it stuck for so long that it's on her headstone.
Embarrassingly I did something similar, only mine was "pal-ah-nee-uck" 😖
I always just pronounce your last name as GOAT. Jk
My funny story regarding this comes with a caveat: It's way funnier if you can hear the accent.
A friend of mine and I went to a random "junk" shop in Dallas (where we lived at the time). She's a bubbly, intelligent hippy-type and wanted to see what was in this place. It's in an old house that looks like incense smells and is full of scratched records, weed pipes, crazy art, and décor that was curated by someone looking for the weirdest stuff in the thrift store.
At first no one is there. Then we hear someone coming from the back and a pint size Japanese man with long hair and a long flowing coat comes out of the hallway with a glass of red wine. His accent is incredibly thick, which we found out was because he'd only lived in America for 8 years at that point. We talked with him about Japan, life, music, etc. for so long that he made us drink wine with him.
He gave us his business card that said, "Jimmy Fukushita" and said, "Fu-ku-shi-ta. It's like a fuckin' shit!" and began cackling.
My friend moved to Hawaii the next month but every time she came to town we made a pilgrimage to Jimmy's place, wine in hand.
Love it!
As a kid, I enjoyed playing my Nintendo games. On the rare chance that I beat one, I was rewarded with the credits. A name I would look for would be something like Kyoko Yamashita. Then I would laugh at the name because it had the word shit in it.
Later on as an adult living in Japan, I found myself living in the town of Iwakuni. This is in Yamaguchi prefecture on the main island of Honshu. "Yama" means mountain and "Guchi" is entrance. This is something I found out by being an illiterate person in Japan. All of this while trying to figure out how to read their ideogram language. This helped me understand that Yamashita means one who lives under the mountain. If younger me had know that, maybe I would have been like wow, that is the one that shits on the mountain.
"Fuku" means good fortune so maybe "Fukushita" means person under good fortune or something similar. I find learning about other languages to be a fascinating experience even though I struggle with the pronunciation of all of them.
Entertaining edit: I forgot. It wasn't "Jimmy," it was "Jimi" because he was once in a Jimi Hendrix cover band, so when he came to the States, that's the name he chose.
Over 20 years ago, before cell phones, before caller ID, answering phones was an experience, but from time to time you would receive the telemarketer. After hello your greeted with "Yes Sir, may I speak with Mr. Lonregren?" As if they just spooned in some tapioca. "Lonergan" (Law-ner(like nerd)-gin(like begin) Lonergan. "Yes Mr. Lonegrin, I am calling today on behaf- "Lonergan" I'd say cutting off their well rehearsed spiel. After a pause they'd say "Lonnegan?" I'd repeat "Lonergan" they'd say "Logran' again, "Lonergan" and they'd say "Lonergan"? "Yes, Lonergan" then, I'd hang up the phone.
Years later I read that some prisons has call centers for prisoners to work in. I read that and imagined, some disgruntled ex-con, was going to show up at my house, I'd answer the door and just before I get pummeled, the con would look at me, then with the most precise pronunciation they say, "Lonergan."
I would have never known that you and I are related if it weren’t for two recent discoveries—a DNA test six months ago and your post. Until recently, my father’s ancestry was a complete mystery. We knew he was half Hawaiian and half European, but the rest was mist and legend due to the guarded circumstances of his adoption.
My sister and I spun tales that Dad was the product of a Hawaiian prostitute abducted by the Nazis for eugenic experiments. That’s how we explained that my father tested with an IQ of 200 as a child in Hawaii, was given a full scholarship to MIT, did his graduate studies at Stanford, and invented the math coprocessor (a critical component to the first personal computers). These days, dear old dad is a complete recluse and spends his waking hours working on the Millennium Prize problems.
That wild (and slightly true) tale was swept away when I located my half-aunt on Ancestry.com. Through our joint research, we discovered that my actual grandfather was Walther (Wladig) Demchuk. Walter’s family emigrated to Canada from the village of Rudka on the Polish/Ukraine border somewhere around 1900.
My grandfather, Walter, ran away from home, falsified his enlistment papers, and joined the Coast Guard when he was only 15-years-old. While stationed in Honolulu in 1942, he met my grandmother, Dolly Kaniho. Walther and Dolly got pregnant.
Dolly, a dance hall girl, rejected her strict Hawaiian nationalist family’s life plans, but she did agree to give up my father for adoption. The whole Hawaiian side of the story is equally fascinating, but I’ll save that for my own blog. (In short, the Kanihos are a huge family of Hawaiian politicians and religious leaders.) As I’ve said, I’ve only known all this for less than a year and I grew up knowing nothing about my Ukrainian heritage.
Mind blown! According to my family tree, it appears that there we several Demchuk/Palahniuk marriages. For example, Anastasia Palahniuk married Joseph Demchuk around 1885 back in the Ukraine.
Soo, hey, Coz :) How's it hangin'
This is amazing. The Palahniuk phenotype is strong.
I enjoy your Palahniuk pronunciation classes. This is the manifesto
When Chuck and I first became friends 20 years ago he would call me on the phone and he’d always say, “Hey, it’s Chuck…Palahniuk.” This went on for two years. He was the only Chuck I knew. And also I had caller ID. Now I understand that he was just training me to say his name.
Hah! For the entire thirty years I was repped by Donadio & Olson I called and announced myself the same way. It seemed arrogant to assume people would know who "Chuck" was. Frankly, I have no idea how to do this job. Remember the TV show 'Rhoda'? I always feel like Carlton, saying, "This is Carlton your doorman."
The plot thickens! It's encouraging to hear that you figure it out as you go. It probably made it endearing when you called or left a question. If I meet someone new I just tell them All-over-Rock. Now that I think of it that sounds like the description at a murder scene. The victim's brains are-
Your package goes out tomorrow.
Thank you Chuck! I'm grateful for all your time to help the animal friends. It's inspiring.
Okay Chelsea, you might appreciate this. As a small child, before I knew my dead grandfather's name, I always wanted to change my first name to Nick. Coincidence? When friends have seen the photo of Grandpa Nick, they get spooked because he and I look so similar. And yeah, he's the one who went crazy. What does "phenotype" mean?
In the film "The Sure Thing" John Cusack's character explains why Nick is the greatest name *fist bump*
Here in the Cincinnati area we have a Chief of Police for a city called Loveland with the last name of Rahe. There’s a park along a river named after one of his ancestors and his family used to run a food distribution company. I knew the chief when we were teenagers and he revealed that the name wasn’t always pronounced like it was a parcel of sunshine. His ancestors switched out the third letter, a “P,” for obvious reasons.