And I’m not talking in any silly metaphoric sense. I mean, literally, my name means “immigrant.”
Do you know how I always say that the only collective identity I recognize is that of an immigrant? Now I have found out the history of my last name and it has all been explained.
As you know, I don’t have my father’s last name because it is very Jewish and living in the USSR with such an obviously Jewish last name was not a good idea.
However, the last name I do have isn’t really my mother’s last name either. The very Ukrainian last (and first) name of my Ukrainian grandfather was Russianized when he went into a military school in Russia in the late 1930s. The actual last name of my grandfather means “a refugee, an immigrant, a person who escapes.” And where was that part of the family escaping from? The structure and the history of the name tells us that they came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
My grandmother’s last name was also Russianized. Originally, it has Romanian roots.
This means that everybody in my family on all sides kept moving to the East, generation after generation. And then I subverted that centuries-long family tradition by making a radical move to the West. But the need to keep moving that’s hidden in my name will keep propelling me forward.
People weren’t even allowed to keep their own Ukrainian names, both first and last. And by the way, both of these Ukrainian grandparents are Holodomor survivors.
And then the Russians keep asking, “But what good did that independence even do for you?” Do you know how hard it is to explain what good it did for the bizillionth time in a row (often to the same fucking person) with a polite and reasonable face?
So bye-bye, Russians*. And hello, my Romanian and Austro-Hungarian sisters and brothers.
* I have conferred the title of an honorary Ukrainian on N, so it’s all cool.
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