David,
Just received your Palestinian stamps, incidentally.
As it happens, my last name is a result of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service improvisation. Originally our family name was Fet, just three letters.
It is of Persian Jewish origin, the grandfather of my grandfather, a Jewish merchant from Mashhad in Iran, had to escape to Russian "porto franco" on the Black Sea, Odessa, because he took a Muslim Persian girl as his wife, and this was a capital offense calling for immediate execution. They lived happily in Odessa, and thus my father's line began.
When I was receiving my first temporary U. S. residential permit (a white thick piece of paper they give you before a standard green card is issued), my last name was spelled "FELT" in capital letters. Naturally, I didn't like that. I told them this was an error, and asked if the letter "L" could be removed. "No," they said, "that's how it's going to be for the next five years, until you get your citizenship, at which point you can change it."
The INS worker who was talking to me was a tall black man, and I felt that he had a sense of humor - his face was naturally disposed for laughter. So, I asked him if, instead of removing "L" altogether, he could draw little feet and a vertical dash to it, making it an "H." As I expected, he laughed and agreed to do so. My son went to kindergarten and school under "Feht" name, and when the time came to get the U.S. citizenship, a few years later, I decided not to change anything, since my son was already used to this name. Also, frankly, I sort of liked the idea of "burning the bridges" behind me, and starting a new line.
As to my ethnic background, it's so bloody mixed that I am usually lost explaining it. Suffice it to say that my mother is of Russian/Polish/German descent, and my father is of Jewish/Persian descent. The only pure German among my ancestors was one of my grand-grandfathers on the mother's side, a general manager of the St, Petersburg tobacco factory (still largest in Russia). His daughter, half German, half Russian, became my grandmother; she ended up in Siberia during the WWII but not in any "enforced" way -- she and her husband, as well as my grandparents on father's side, were simply escaping from the war zone. My parents met in Tomsk university in Siberia, which during the war was serving as a substitute to Moscow and St. Petersburg universities. My mother's father and brother died in 1943 at Kursk, during the bloodiest battle in human history that stopped German advance.
I grew up in purely Russian culture, and spoke Russian only until coming to America, though my father, a polyglot, had so many books in various languages that I kind of learned reading French, German, Italian and English by myself.
So, I suppose, your Russian Orthodox friend might as well "snicker derisively" at herself. Making hasty judgments about people one doesn't know well is an attribute of a very narrow mind.
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