What's Your Name, (Wo)Man?*

On the link between "Adolescence", (Italian) mothers' surnames, toxic masculinity & more

*If you love Hamilton like my family does, the title of this newsletter may inspire you to burst into song: “The world’s gonna know your name, what’s your name, man? Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton…” But moving on as this newsletter has nothing to do with Hamilton although, it is about names.

Matt Botsford, Unsplash

In keeping with a pop culture theme, I have yet to watch Adolescence, the Netflix show everyone is talking about. I am not sure if I will ever watch it in its entirety, mostly because I don’t think I can get through the harrowing scenes as a mom of a young boy and a young girl, at least not right now, but I have seen clips, read a lot about what happens and yes, know the ending. I probably do not need to give you a summary as it is everywhere at the moment, but in case, it is a British crime-drama mini series about a 13-year-old boy who is arrested at the beginning of the four-part show for the murder of a female classmate. The following episodes depict the aftermath of the arrest on not only the boy and his immediate family, but everyone involved in the community, while examining toxic online culture, especially around misogynistic influencers, male violence and hyper-masculinity.

As I was (doom) scrolling the other day, I came across a love ‘em/hate ‘em- “suggested post” a Polish man had written about a possible “Easter Egg” in Adolescence. I love Easter eggs in pop culture, a term used to describe subtle details, hidden meanings and covert messages you can find in films, TV shows, music, video games etc. Do a quick search on the “Easter eggs” in your favourite show or movie, and there is likely an online discussion about them. They are fun and often, you never find out if what you think might be an Easter egg is indeed one, or you are reading wayyyy too much into something.

The social media post was about one of the teenage characters in Adolescence, a boy named Ryan Kowalska. As the author of the post rightfully points out, the character’s surname suggests he is of Polish heritage as Kowalska, and the masculine version Kowalski, are among the more popular Polish surnames. There are hundreds of thousands of Poles living in the UK so this is nothing unusual, but again as this author points out, the last letter of the surname is what caught his, and my attention. In Poland, surnames that end with s-k-i are gendered. So, a woman with a name like Kowalska would have s-k-a while a man would be Kowals-k-i. Yes, even husband and wife or siblings in the same family. This has changed slightly over the years where a woman could also have the s-k-i ending if she wanted to “match” her male partner, or if she immigrated with her family somewhere and needs/wants to be the same as her father, but a man would rarely have “ska”. A s-k-a ending for a male is an anomaly. (It is not lost on me that “Ryan” does not have a Polish translation and this too could be part of the character development when the name was chosen as in he is second or third generation).

But immigration often changes, well, everything, including surnames depending on the country and the person and how much they want to share about their heritage. (Think also: the shortening of long Eastern European names, or changing a “w” to a “v” in places where the sounds differ in the majority and minoritised languages.) In my parents’ case in Canada, my mom took the “ski” surname making things somewhat “easier” in that as a couple, my parents were just the Gudowskis. But I always kept the feminine version for some reason, which surprisingly did not cause too much confusion over the years considering my surname did not match my parents’ surnames.

Consider also how language plays into all this for a moment. When someone has a surname that signifies an obvious heritage and that person is not a user of the language that is expected to be attached to the surname, this may unearth all sorts of emotions around belonging and being of one heritage but not being able to use the language. For example hearing, “well with that name, you must be Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese… how do you not know the language?” Has this every happened to you? I would love to hear in the comments.

But let’s get back to the Easter Egg in Adolescence. I started reading the more than 1,600 comments on the post and there were some interesting theories. Some were as simple as, “Born in the UK, inherited his mother’s name” or “lazy writing” (no way on the latter, TV shows have extensive teams that check this stuff). But yes, the “born in the UK” is true to some extent. When my son was born, his hospital tag said “Baby Gudowska” and I remember loving it so much. No, it was not a “typical” male Polish surname, but that was my surname and he was mine. Plus, its feminisation is something we need more of on a greater life-encompassing scale because gender is not binary.

The more interesting theories in the post about Adolescence were about how his mother may be a single mother, who passed on the exact spelling of her own surname, or that the show’s creators purposely chose what is predominantly considered the feminine version of the Polish surname as a “poetic irony” for a show that deals with hyper- and toxic masculinity. If that is why, clever and the best Easter egg!

As I have written before, one of my greatest regrets after having children