Seferian: What’s in an Armenian Name?

Thank you Nareg,for a very informative article.May i add the different pronunciations of Armenian alphabet  Eastern and western Armenian.Strangely i found that my cousin’s name ..written KAKIG  which i was saying it is actually pronounced as GAGIK.I was corrected several times.Another example is the trans pronunciation of the letters P &B   also D & T.
DANKS

Interesting essay. I am at a loss, however, to comprehend the author’s name, ending with a G instead of K (unless he has submerged himself into too much LOS type stuff, or he thinks the majority of the readers of Armenian Weekly are Arevmtahay, HOS-HOS folks). For an Armenian from India, I also don’t quite understand the root of his last name. I have quite a few relatives and relatives of relatives that lived in India for many years (my mother’s sister’s husband was the chief priest for the Indian “tem” and my uncle was a champion field hockey player of the Calcutta team) and I have never heard anyone else with the author’s last name (you guessed it right; my mother is Jughayeci, and I grew up in Iran – law degree). But this can be attributed to my own ignorance. The hard core Armenians of Iran, when it comes to identification, in addition to one’s last name also ask, oumoncic-as? (from whom are you?) Every family has a nickname of sorts in addition to the last name, that further identifies the person, and these nicknames run the gamut. One that comes to mind from my childhood days is Mistik-Xacenc, that means small-piece-of-bread, and Nazaretencic, meaning from the Nazarets. This locks the person to a clan, un-mistakenly. I vaguely remember there is, probably, research made in this area; if not, perhaps this is another interesting topic to look into.
And yes, I know a Najjarian who became Carpenter and a Galoustian who became Gale. I have used Steve Canyon for casual acquaintances and Aber-ham in delicatessens, not realizing that the former belongs to a pilot cartoon character. I changed it to Salvatore Gianini. Vito for short. My very pure and very rare Armenian first name contains seven letters, plus eleven letters for my last name, eighteen in all with lots of A’s, and I wouldn’t change them for anything, even Robert Taylor, or Clark Gable, not even George Clooney. How do you like to spell eighteen letters fifty times a day over the phone? By the fifth letter everyone gets confused. Anything more than two syllables confuses Americans. 

Just an observation regarding the addition of “h” at the end of names ending in “e” such as Armineh, Narineh, Karineh, Marineh… In English speaking world the “e” at the end of the words is often silent, thus the above mentioned names will be pronounced incorrectly as Nareen, Kareen, Mareen, and Armineh will be peonounced as Armayne! Hence the addition of “h” at the end. Same parskahays will not add the “h” to the end of their names in France, or other other non-English speaking countries where the word ending in “e” is not silent.

Good article. If I may slightly disagree, where the “yan” is indeed used by Armenians from Armenia because it corresponds with reformed orthography, the “ian” does not correspond to old orthography. The old orthography suffix would be transliterated as “ean”, not “ian”. The i-a-n ending is a sort of translation across Indo-European languages. In English, it is generally the suffix used to denote “of”. It is the same suffix used by Armenians, Iranians and others to denote “of” which we use for our surnames (of Petros, of Marash, of the pot-maker, etc). Armenians transliterate their name “ian” because of this common spelling in the English language, and not because it corresponds to the old orthography of Armenian.

Armen, that’s interesting because the Armenian alphabet has been used in the past, in some limited fashion to write in other languages, including Turkish.

Dear Ashot Yerkat,

I think author’s last name Seferian is the same as Safarian and Safar in Farsi means Travel.
I want to put my 2 cents in regarding the “Nicknames” that Iranian Armenians have, it was about late 1930s or early 1940s that Iranian government started issuing Identification/Birth Certificates, at that time Armenian population of Iran was growing fast and in large cities like Tabriz, Esfahan, Tehran and etc.  there were numerous name duplications creating problems in daily conversations and correspondence forcing people to create additional identifiers for similar names like “Big nose”, “Crippled”, “Loud”, “Blind”; “Stooge”, also city names with “tsi” at the end and even “Bread & Cheese”, you name it; all king of names even nasty and impolite ones depending on habits, looks, actions of the bearers, and believe it or not it was doing the job and also comic; until the government started issuing the Identification Booklets with proper identifiers, which eliminated all those “Nicknames” but of course wasn’t perfect and the author already explained how Armenian names are getting twisted when was written in other languages.      
And finally Ashot a friendly correction, my intention is not to insult you and please accept my apologies upfront if you are going to feel so.
In your first paragraph you were asking where the author’s last name is from, and when you wrote Arevmtahay it was very clear that who you were referring to; up to that point it wasn’t quite but sort of polite; then you continued with some ridicules words ending with “HOS-HOS folks” which to my knowledge was unnecessary and totally out of line.

Dear Norberto,

PODERIA ME TRADUZIR O SOBRENOME

Which means what?

My name is Levon Seferyan, Levon with yetch and huen, never Leon and Seferyan with the equivalent of e and yetch as I learned in a school run by the Mekhitarist order. As for foreigners cannot pronounce it nor they cannot write it, hogwash I say, that is exactly the way my business is called, in my name , every supplier and customer whether anglo, franco or other, they know how to pronounce and write it, too, and that’s the way it is lettered on my service truck also. That’s just the way it is, if you hide and make up excuses for your name, of course some two bit foreigner with a barbarian name will give you a tough time, be a bit in the face you people and they will learn, eventually; I’m as stubborn and pushy as an Armenian can come, what can I say, ays marte hin hogh e.
Best regards.

Hi Wanda, aside from the “yan” and “ian” endings of last names, Armenians take their fathers name as a middle name. For girls, it will often be their fathers name + “a” or “ovna” sometimes (although this one is more Russian). So for example, my dad’s name is Danik, so my middle name is Danika. While I was named after my grandmother (fathers mother), I don’t think that’s 100% always the case. Hope that helps!

Very Interesting

En passant, my ancestors were traders, probably caravaneers too, I’m guessing that’s where Seferyan comes from.