One day, many years ago, while still living in Chicago, I entered the offices of one more new dentist and one more new receptionist.. One of a series of new dentists and receptionists that I change every few years in the hope that if I change my tormentor the next torment will be gentle, each new experience a disappointment. I drew near what appeared to be a bullet-proof window and I wondered if dentists were under threat from some unknown radical clients, having heard that dentists (at that time) had the highest alcoholic and suicide rates. As I stood before that glass window the receptionist glanced down at her appointment book, then up at me, and asked for my name.
Ida Kotyuk, I tell her.
“God! I would kill for that name,” she said.
Puzzling and Odd…did she mean Ida or did she mean the family name Kotyuk?
My first memory that family names were relevant took place when we visited my uncles in Michigan.
Two events occurred—the first was my father walking into that Michigan living room, one brother following after another, then another, then another, six brothers in all; my uncles! I was stunned to see the family resemblance. If you do not grow up within a large extended family, you do not experience, and therefore are unaware of, physical family traits, dominant genes at work mirroring each other. As I looked at one uncle after another, I was hard pressed to single out my father. They all had the same height, coloring, and characteristics: swarthy, black haired, the same deep blue eyes. I grew up hearing I did not look like either parent and assumed my parents did not look like anyone else. But in that Michigan living room, at that moment, I understood why my small family puzzled as to how I did not resemble neither mother, nor father, nor brother.
The second remembered event of that day was the brothers’ discussion of our family name. Europeans understand that when your family name is Barbour or Barber your family were barbers. Americans understand that the spelling of family names have lost their importance because, as families came into this new American country to settle, Immigration would translate foreign sounding names into American phonetic letters. In those few moments on Ellis Island one or two strokes of a pen severed family connections; families losing the familiarity of their shared spellings.
In trying to understand what profession could a “Kotyuk” have been before immigration, the Michigan discussion went on for hours until one uncle finally admitted to investigating our family name. He admitted to researching and spending many hours and many dollars to learn what our name might mean. He knew that “tyuk” in Hungarian meant “hen” and he thought “kot” could be “to cut,” and as the family Kotyuk had been farmers, and like many farmers also raised chickens, he determined that Kotyuk meant chicken with its head cut off [which, for me, has led to a thousand dinner stories.]
I never objected to the name Kotyuk, I considered marriage would change that for me. But I disliked the name Ida; especially while growing up with other school children called Buffy, Suzie, or some other popular white-bread name. Ida Kotyuk sounds like a chemist, an astronomer, a scientist, a drudge; anything but a “portrait painter.”
But this dentist’s receptionist would “kill” for my name? “Why,” I ask?
She explains she is helping her brother, the dentist, but is a painter, a painter with the common white-bread name similar to Mary Smith. To standout from the Mary Smith crowd she signs her name Maryy Smith, Mary Smythe, M.Smith, mSmith, etc. You get the idea.
“When you sign your canvases, no one will confuse you with anyone else.”
She was and is right. One hundred years from today in some amended version of “The Antiques Road Show” two paintings will appear from the same period, one by Mary Smith and one by Ida Kotyuk. Mary Smith’s painting may be found to be of greater value; but Ida Kotyuk will be researched quickly. I realize that I am fortunate indeed; this strange family name suggesting chicken with its head cut off is as unique as the subjects of my portraits.
Who knew….
If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.
©Ida Kotyuk, Portrait Painter, MA
www.portraits-oils.com
No comments:
Post a Comment