Unless
you come from parents or grandparents who
immigrated
to this country from some other, you may
not
scrutinize your lineage very thoroughly, especially
if
you happen to be a milk-toast white guy such as I.
Being
black or brown, featured with high cheek bones
and
skin tinted reddish-brown, adorned with almond-
shaped
eyes, you likely have a good idea about your
origins.
Surnames
such as Polakowski, Flannery, Scaramucci
Garcia
or Chen can often be a fair indicator as to the land
from
which your forefathers had their origins. But, for
the
most part, young folks these days, the Smiths, Jonses,
Williamses,
and Clarks of the world, being of the Heinz 57
variety,
couldn’t care less about the root origins or ethnicity
of
their names.
Oh,
in this day of genetic and biological advances, there
are
mail-in DNA tests available one can obtain for a price.
For
about a hundred bucks, one can get an ancestry pie
chart
with a good measure of accuracy which outlines the
heritage
of your kinfolk going way back nearly to the Adam
and
Eve beginnings of your ancestry.
Take
me for instance, my grandfather came to these shores
in
the early 1900s from Peloponnese in Greece. When he
was
processed by officials at Ellis Island they took a look
at
his last name, Hajiannis, and confused by the Greek
alphabet
and pronunciation, they assigned him an Ameri-
canized
identity. From that time forward he and his progeny
would
legally be known as, Hanch, which had no Hellenic
ring
to it at all.
In
fact, when I was a soldier stationed in Germany, I was
occasionally
approached by folks who upon seeing my
name
tag asked if I was German? (Hansch with an “sch,”
is
a fairly common German name.) I would smile politely
and
shake my head, yes, considering my mother’s maiden
name
was Deichmann. But that just complicated the whole
matter
of surname origins, so I never bothered to explain.
So,
here we are, all of us Americans, many of whom have
had
their ancestral names mixed, homogenized, misspelled,
mispronounced,
supplanted and suffused. At a social gathering
a
few years back, my wife was asked by another woman for
her
last name. “Hanch,” she offered. And the puzzled woman,
probably
unable to identify any particular ethnicity or origin
rudely
responded, “That’s not a very pretty name.”
From
time to time I have considered changing my last name
back
to, Hajiannis, but what the hell, people have a hard
enough
time trying to say or spell, Hanch, a not so pretty
name
some would say anyway.
Chris
Hanch 11-10-18
