Imagine growing up having to write Mackowiecki on all your assignments!
It wasn’t but recently that I was giving one of my fifth grade students a hard time about misspelling his own name on a writing assignment, but I’m hardly one to talk. When I was a kid I remember sitting with my mom for what seemed like hours at a time trying to learn how to spell my name. “It plays fair,” she’d say. “You just have to remember where to put that extra e.” I’d sound it out, then slap in that e any old place. Eventually my mom gave up on me and let me go by just Mack.
I think Mom was always disappointed I couldn’t conquer our ancestral name. Ironically, what my mom had me trying to spell wasn’t really our old Polish name at all. Her father had immigrated here in 1912 aboard the Vaderland. The family name, Mazowiecki (Mak-uh-vee-et-ski), was a mouthful (don’t forget that heavy eastern-European accent), so the folks at Ellis Island changed it to Makowiecki and eventually Mackowiecki (Mak-o-wik-ee), giving us the Hawaiian-sounding name I enjoy today. You just have to remember that extra e.
Mack