As you might have noticed (while trying to remember, spell or pronounce my last name), I’ve got a last name that was at some point long enough to fit into two lines on my driver’s license (I guess I need to be grateful it’s not “Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele” long). It was being constantly misspelled, and there were 22 other less important issues.
Well, the picture below explains how it all got started.
This is a photo of my grandfather. His name is “Seyed Jaffar Khoshgozaran Haghighi”. When I was born, I was named after him, which made my full name “Seyed Jaffar Khoshgozaran Haghighi”, although everybody called me by my real name “Ali” (go figure!). For you language geeks out there here’s a breakdown:
“Seyed” is a title which essentially translates to “Sir”. “Jaffar” was my grandfather’s first name. “Khoshgozaran” roughly translates to “party animal” and “Haghighi” means “truly”. So in short my (grandfather’s) last name translates to “real party animal”.
After several phases of shortening my entire name, I landed on “Ali Khosh”, which is hopefully easy enough for you my lazy readers to remember, spell and pronounce (like “Kosh” in “OshKosh”).