“There’s a lot in life you can’t protect your kids against,” a friend from Nebraska advised me when I told him I wanted to have a baby. “The one thing you can do is put them into the world with a good, solid name.”
I knew what he meant: a recognizable name the general American public can pronounce. But even then, before my daughter was conceived, I knew I wouldn’t follow his advice.
Olivia Gayane Katrandjian
Olivia is a good, solid name. In the United States, Katrandjian is so far from good and solid that I’m astounded when non-Armenians pronounce it correctly on the first try. More often, people pause five letters in and look at me for guidance. “Katra—” “Katrandjian. No, not Katranjistan. Katrandjian.” Don’t get me started on my middle name. Children mispronounced Gayane so badly that on my high school diploma I replaced it with Grace.
John Christopher Wildt
My husband is a thoughtful, funny, well-read, and open-minded man who loves the outdoors and respects women. Born in Connecticut, he has Irish, French, German, and English roots, not Armenian, but he quickly learned to heat up lahmajun when he didn’t feel like cooking and stay in his seat after a movie to scan the credits for names ending in “ian.” When we decided to marry, I knew he would be an equal partner in housework and parenthood, and a good role model for our children. But the patriarchy dies hard.
I didn’t expect him to take up Katrandjian, but I did offer an Armenianization of his name we could both adopt: Wildtian. He refused to budge from the five letters of his good, solid, Germanic name. He was surprised I didn’t jump at the opportunity to leave Katrandjian behind. Most Armenian names were still so foreign to him that he remembered one of my friends by referring to him in private as Chocolate Babken. Why wouldn’t I want to join him in a world where making a dinner reservation over the phone takes under a minute?
But to become a Wildt would be to strip myself of my identity. Forget the bylines I’d acquired as a journalist; I wasn’t so delusional as to think I had built my name into a recognizable brand I couldn’t afford to lose. Only a few years before, I’d been the tiny, blurred body pretending to work at a computer behind Diane Sawyer on World News Tonight, placed there so it seemed that she reported from a buzzing newsroom. My task was to look professional answering the phone, as if the Washington bureau was calling, though in reality my nearly blind grandmother was on the other end, binoculars hanging from her neck, shouting as if her voice had to reach across the Hudson River: “Are you wearing turquoise? I think we saw you for a second before the break!”
I could start again as Olivia Wildt, or change my name and keep Katrandjian as my byline. But I didn’t want to. I could not fathom going through life without an Armenian name. Though Katrandjian is unpronounceable to most, I had come to see it as my golden ticket—an instant connection to Armenians all over the world. I could cold call or email any one of the tribe, no matter how famous. And in my twenties, as I built a career in journalism, an industry in which connections are crucial, I did. I had coffee with an opinion writer for the Los Angeles Times. A veteran Washington Post journalist forwarded one of my pitches to the appropriate editor. An ABC News reporter introduced me to her contacts around the globe.
I even connected to people whose names only sounded Armenian. For my first summer internship, through a program run by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), AGBU sent my resume to Laura Trevelyan at the BBC’s United Nations bureau, not realizing that Trevelyan comes from a long line of British journalists with absolutely no Armenian heritage. I took it upon myself to show her the Armenian khachkar on display in the building, and after an instructive and inspiring summer, Trevelyan gifted me her book, A Very British Family.
As my publication credits grew, young Armenians started emailing me for advice. Grateful to have been supported by others, I was always eager to help in any way I could. I firmly believed then, as I do now, that we must lift each other up if we want to thrive. To that end, I founded the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) to mentor emerging writers, support established authors, and celebrate Armenian literature. Through this platform, we have built a global Armenian literary community, championed historically marginalized voices, and fostered intercultural exchange.
I would not give up membership to this tribe for anything. My name is my diasporan passport, and I couldn’t imagine raising children who did not have that visual pronouncement of their Armenian identity. So my husband and I struck a deal: our children would have his last name and an Armenian first name. My daughter can eat bright green scrambled eggs with her paternal grandparents on Saint Patrick’s Day, but you’d better believe before that she’s munching on yalanchi (and she did, beginning at ten months, alongside her iron-fortified cereal).
Lusinè Zabelle Wildt
It took a while to get pregnant. After invasive tests, medication, and award-winning mood swings, I finally had a cheoreg in the oven, a kufte in the pot. When my husband and I found out the baby was a girl, we chose the name Lusine, after my cousin who had left her family in Yerevan as a teenager, taught herself English, and built a life and career in the United States with little help. We wanted our daughter to be so strong and independent. And we loved that Lusine means “moon”: after we had tried so hard to conceive, she would bring light to our lives. We added an accent over the “e” in the hope it would make the pronunciation clearer, at least where we live, in Luxembourg, where accents are common. We chose Lusinè’s middle name, Zabelle, after Zabel Yesayan, the Armenian writer and feminist who fought for human rights and social justice and was the only woman on the list of Armenian intellectuals to be arrested on April 24, 1915.
I struggled with this decision. Older generations who fled to the United States with long, complicated names often felt pressured to assimilate. My maternal grandfather, born Hampartzoom Hampartzoomian, changed his name to Lee Hamptian after returning to New York from World War II. He never mentioned being the subject of overt racism, only that he simply “couldn’t take it anymore.” My grandmother was born Grace Tefankjian, which literally translates to “son of a gun.” “Sometimes I shortened it to Tefank, to make it easier for people,” she said. “In college, a professor took one look at my name and said Smith instead.”
I was choosing to give my daughter what brought my grandparents so much difficulty. Studies show that your name shapes the way you’re treated. In the United States, people with English-sounding names have better job prospects, make more money, and are even more likely to be helped in a life-or-death situation. In a 2001 study, the psychologist Albert Mehrabian found that individuals with unusual given names are perceived to be less moral, less popular and fun, and less successful.
But to me, the benefits outweighed the potential setbacks. Lusinè looked like her father even before she was born, in the 3D ultrasound images. While I have dark hair and eyes, and eyebrows that rival Frida’s when unplucked, Lusinè is fair skinned with light brown hair that curls into blonde, and blue eyes that at times appear green. When she was four months old, the three of us traveled from Luxembourg to New York via Frankfurt. A German customs agent stopped us: Lusinè had no Luxembourgish identification but instead an American passport that had never been stamped, and not only did she and I not share a last name but she looked nothing like me. “I was in labor for three days,” I said in the most measured tone I could muster, trying not to lose it on the eşek who had the power to block our passage. After an admonishing look from a female agent, he let us through. When we finally reached Newark Airport, I pushed Lusinè’s stroller into an elevator while my husband got our bags. An elderly couple asked me where her parents were, as if I were the nanny.
It is strange to look at a child you carried inside you for nine months, one who calls for you at all hours of the day and night, who clings to your legs and buries her face in your hair, and not see yourself in her features. But no matter how little Lusinè’s appearance resembles mine, she is branded with an inextricable part of me: an undoubtedly Armenian name that links her to her people.
I will not give my children recognizable names so others don’t have to stretch beyond their comfort zones. I know that on most occasions when Lusinè introduces herself, she’ll be asked to repeat her name. And if it gets to be too much of a hassle, if she hates her name and resents me for giving it to her, she can change it.
But I hope she comes to see Lusinè Zabelle Wildt as good and solid. I hope I have given her a sense of the difficulties minorities face and respect for others no matter what they look like, where they come from, what religion they practice, or whom they love. I hope I have paid homage to those who came before her and were stripped of their identity by murder, conversion, or assimilation. I hope I have given her instant membership to a community of people who want to help each other thrive. I hope, when she introduces herself and people say, “What?” it will be an opportunity to explain her name and identity.
“It’s Armenian,” I imagine her saying. “I am Armenian.”
A Good, Solid, Name was anthologized in We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Armenian Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2023).
Photo Courtesy of Olivia Katrandjian
