KO-chees-kee KAH-tah-lin vagyok

This is my Hungarian name complete with pronunciation help and stress on the first syllable. The kids laugh when I say my name properly: Ko-sis-kee. They also laugh when they call me Miss Kat...or Miss "Macska" (cat in Hungarian). I also get meowed at. They love twisting my name around as much as they can. And telling them I'm a "Katherine" doesn't help either...as the "th" sound proves to be very troublesome. So, I'm often just referred to as "teacher" not unlike most other Hungarian teachers. It is entirely appropriate to call your teacher "teacher" here.

Anyway, I think this calls for a name change when I move to my new school next year. Maybe I'll go completely native with my name and become a Kati. This does not sound like Katie. It's more of a KAH-tee.

On another less phonetic note...I gained more headway into the meaning and whereabouts of our rare family name. I know that everyone in the family has been counting on me to figure something out while I'm here. After receiving a letter, a list of Hungarian ancestors, relatives, and their addresses, and old Hungarian postcards from a relative in Michigan, I've been asking around for translation help. No one can seem to understand the Hungarian on the postcards...they say it's half old-school Hungarian and half-Slav.

Never once could find a Kocisky in the American phonebooks when I was younger. Now, one of my colleagues has told me that she had a professor named "Kocisky" back in her university days.

"He was a mean guy," she said. We checked my list of Hungarian relatives and his name was listed and he currently lives in Miskolc (where my colleague went to university). With her help, we have tried to get in touch with him, but haven't been successful.

I already knew that "kocsi" meant "car" or "carriage" in Hungarian. "Kocsis" is a somewhat common family name here and it corresponds with carriage driver.

Another possible answer comes from the city of "Kassa" in old Hungary before border changing Trianon. This is "Kosice" in Slovakia. It is on the same longitude as Szerencs and about two hours north in modern day Slovakia, where I acquired my work visa.

George, Etelka's husband told me that my name might come from "Kassai" or "from Kassa." For example, several of my students have the last name "Szegedi" which means that their family comes from Szeged. So with the Slovakian name, "Kosice", we would get: Kosice(i). It would sound like: KO-shi-tsee. I love that our name has a bad word in it!! hehehe.

So that's a little insight Mom, Dad, and Brian...and you can pass this on to all those who share this unique name.