The love in a family name

I come from a family of nicknames, endearments. I suppose so many of us do.

My father, Thomas Vitez, was a Jewish refugee from Hitler, his family leaving Hungary in 1940, just in time, and arriving in New York City when he was 14. My father was born Tamás (“s” is pronounced “sh”) in Budapest, and became Thomas in America, though he was often called Tomika (with the “o” as long as in “home”) by Hungarian relatives. The “ka” was a diminutive meaning “little.”

After serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II, his proudest achievement as an American, my father returned to New York City, attended college on the G.I. Bill, and met my mother, a German Jewish refugee, whose escape from Europe was so harrowing that she never spoke German again. She was born Marianne, pronounced Mariana as a child outside Düsseldorf, and became straight-up Marianne in America. My father called her Pilinkó. When he felt increasingly affectionate, he’d expand to Pilinkóci or even Pilinkócika. I never knew the origin of the endearment, and foolishly, I never asked. It just was.

My mother often called him T.G., for Thomas George.

In 1951, they married. My father had taken a job with the Internal Revenue Service, and after five years as a revenue agent in Buffalo, he accepted a position in Washington, and my parents eventually settled in the northern Virginia suburbs, raising three sons. I was the youngest.

Two or three times a year, we would drive in our Rambler station wagon up the New Jersey Turnpike and over the George Washington Bridge to see the old relatives in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. I would leave a world of Little League, swim team, Gilligan’s Island, and Slurpees and visit all the old Hungarian relatives with the most wonderful names: Grandma Bözsi, Aunt Zsuzsi, (rhyming as Bo͝oZHi and Zo͝oZHi), and Uncle Laci or Laci Bácsi in Hungarian (pronounced Lutzy Botchy), as my father called him. These were all nicknames. My mother had some great nicknames on her side, too. My favorite was her Toronto cousin, Cousin Muschi (rhymes with “pushy”).

I am Michael Thomas, but my father called me Miklós (again, “s” is pronounced “sh”), a Hungarian translation of Michael. Growing up I was Miklós. As an adult I was Miklós. Until my father died, in 2004, at the age of 78, I was Miklós to him. When he was feeling especially affectionate, he would add a diminutive, Miklóska.

Honestly, all those years, I never thought much about the name Miklós, or cared for it, particularly. It was what it was — until it wasn’t. Since my father was the only one who ever called me that, the name Miklós died with him.

Roll the clock. When my son’s wife was pregnant, in 2017, with our first grandchild, they asked us what we would like to be called as grandparents. My wife knew right away — Nana, after her Nana, whom she adored. I had no idea. My son suggested Big Mike, but there’s nothing big about me. Pop-Pop or Grandpa just didn’t set off any sparks. I loved some of the names my peers where choosing — Chief and Big Daddy among them — but I couldn’t come up with anything so clever.

The baby arrived, a boy, and my son, Tim, and his wife, Alyssa, named him Thomas after my father. I didn’t expect this gesture and was deeply moved. I still struggled with what to be called. After a few months, it came to me. I wanted to be Miklós. Of course, I was too embarrassed to ask Tim and Alyssa to call me that. It just seemed so distant from the life I was living now. My father had been dead for 13 years. Nobody else had called me Miklós. I didn’t think my own kids even remembered my father calling me that name, and Alyssa, who never met my father, had surely never heard of it. But God bless Alyssa. When I sheepishly told her one day that’s what I wanted to be called, she embraced it, immediately made it official, and permanent. My wife and I now had new identities. We were Nana and Miklós.

Now, to 5-year-old Tommy and his little sister Emma, and also to my daughter’s little girl, Lila, I am Miklós. It’s all they know. It’s who I am. I am now also Miklós to my own children. When my youngest is feeling unusually affectionate, he will call me Miklóska. This is likely because when he was living at home during the pandemic, he more than once heard me sing full-throated in the shower, “I am Miklóska!”

I can’t even begin to express, or necessarily explain the amount of joy I feel in this name. It is truly one of the greatest pleasures of my life, to be known among my children and grandchildren as Miklós. Maybe I never realized just how much I missed my father, or grieved adequately when he died. But in a way, this brings him back to life.

Also, perhaps more than I knew, I felt my own life, and the lives of my children, were disconnected from the experiences of my parents: their struggles, heritage, and immigrant stories. Somehow, for me, being called Miklós strengthens this connection. I feel in a sense as if a circle has been completed, a continuity established, and a beautiful symmetry links my past and my future. I came into this world with a Thomas Vitez calling me Miklós, and God willing, I will leave the same way.

Michael Vitez was an Inquirer staff writer for 30 years and won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. He is currently the director of Narrative Medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.