{"id":1573,"date":"2017-01-23T11:36:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T19:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2022-04-25T11:54:30","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T18:54:30","slug":"about-my-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/about-my-name\/","title":{"rendered":"About my name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a relatively long name, if you consider my first, middle and last names together. As individual pieces they are pretty short: \u00c7etin<\/strong> means tough, difficult or insurmountable, while Kaya<\/strong> means rock or boulder, which makes my first and middle names as \u00c7etin Kaya<\/strong>, a rock that is  difficult to climb rock or an \u201cinsurmountable rock\u201d. One might get the impression that my parents  must have been pretty ambitious about me when they decided to name me, however, the real story is simpler and somewhat poignant: \u00c7etinkaya<\/strong> is the name of a small town and train station between Sivas<\/strong> and Erzincan<\/strong>, two eastern cities of Turkey:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When my mother was carrying me in her tummy, my father took a train from Istanbul, where he was doing his 24-month-long military service, and came as far as the town of \u00c7etinkaya, where the train was stranded due to heavy snow. They were stuck there many hours, hungry and thirsty, until the snow was cleared out. The people of \u00c7etinkaya brought bread and tea for the unlucky passengers of this coal-powered steam train, looking probably something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This memory is the story behind my unusual name. I say it is unusual because most people in Turkey have short classical names, such as, Ahmet, Ali, Mehmet, Mustafa, and \u00d6mer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, my last name Ko\u00e7<\/strong> means ram<\/em> (male sheep<\/em>) which is a completely random choice. Since Ko\u00e7<\/strong> is pronounced like Coach<\/strong> in English, my non-Turkish students often call me Dr. Coach <\/em>or Professor Coach<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someday I could tell you more; suffices to say that one day suddenly the Turkish Government of the day (1930s) decided that everyone should have a last name, and a clerk appeared by my grandfather\u2019s door. Apparently, my grandfather selected this last name within a few seconds when asked by the clerk to quickly produce a last name. A few of my father\u2019s cousins selected other and equally arbitrary last names, such as Balk\u0131 and Akyol. Thus, different branches of my family (my grandfather\u2019s cousins) have different last names. These last names are not our family names. Due to the name of our great grandfather, we are also known as the \u015eamo Tribe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a relatively long name, if you consider my first, middle and last names together. As individual pieces they<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humans","category-time"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1578,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetinkayakoc.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}