Books, Typoglycemia, and Nominative Determinism

A short background of me and my name

A few fun facts about my last name. In my life, only like 8 people have correctly pronounced it cold bore, so if you don’t get it right the first time, don’t sweat it. It’s only six letters and 100% phonetic, but it’s unfairly sneaky. That’s because in English, if the first three letters of a word contain a K, and N, and an O, they are always in the order KNO and the K is silent. But if you look at my last name, nope! 😃 The phenomenon called “Typoglycemia” means that when most people see all six letters, the English-speaking brain “simplifies things”, and it comes out as “noves” (with the silent K).

But this is because it’s the Americanification of the fairly common Hungarian surname Könyves which is literally translated as “Book Man.” In Hungarian, “könyv” is the literal word for “book” and the “es” suffix means “man” similar to what you find in the surnames Cartman or Freeman — a person who drives a cart or who has been declared free respectively. At Ellis Island, the derps at the front desk couldn’t even with the umlaut over the O, and thus my great-grandfather went from Mihaly Könyves to Michael Konves.

Lastly, the theory of Nominative Determinism suggests that a person’s last name influences their profession. So I’m not a bookie, but as “Steve Bookman,” I sure do love me some books!