Semiconductor/Materials Researcher
Collection of Nicknames
When I was a child I collected stamps and small cars, like almost every boy. But later, when I had to change my residence places due to employment, it became difficult to continue with stamps and cars. So I turned to something which has no weight and no size: to nicknames. Actually all this started much earlier and I think the main reason is difficulties, which different languages have with my given and family names. In my native language, Georgian, my names are very common and easy to pronounce. They are shown here:
The meaning is also not so difficult: the family name means something like the son of a blacksmith (probably it would be Smith or Smithson in English). The given name originates from Iran or Turkey and means something like unbeatable. My grandfather, Dimitry Mchedlidze told me once that he named me "Teimuraz" in honor of the known dovish king of Georgia.
Pronunciation for Teimuraz is simple until the letters "MU". "MU" in Georgian sounds Like "MOU" from the word "move" and then again simple until the end. Something like "teimo(ue)raz". Can you pronounce it? If not, don't be disappointed, you are far from being alone! Now I'll show you what happened with my given name later.
Well, TEMO and TEM are just from shortened Teimuraz. I was called this way in my family and at school. My Grandmother, Vera Davydova (she was native Russian), called me TEMURIK or TEMURKA. My nanny called me TUMURAZIK. First to call me TIM was my older sister, Olga. When I got a passport my given name was written therein a French manner as TEIMOURAZ. In the rock band of the Tbilisi State University, where I was playing guitar, I got another nickname, MALUSH (“kiddy, small boy” - Russian, probably in contrast to my actual dimensions and weight). Later, in the Institute of Solid State Physics, the head of the laboratory, Prof. Vitaly Kveder asked me whether I would object if colleagues will call me TAI, I had no objections (at that time I already started to collect nicknames!). Besides "Tai", they also came up with TIMUR and TYOMA.
After that starts Japan. My new nickname was decided simply adding Japanese "san" to "Tai", so the next was TAI-SAN. Also in Japan, somebody called me TEI-SAN. But for official use, I needed transcription of my name to Japanese. This was done at a very professional level by Prof. Koji Sumino, my host at the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University. I got my name in Kanji! You can see the image of Kaji characters here.
Can you read it? Even if you were a native Japanese, you would have a problem with reading! Names in Japanese is some special topic because besides correct pronunciation (and each Kanji character has several pronunciations) the very important factor is the meaning. The meaning should not be negative when you read the name in the needed pronunciation. This is fantastically difficult to make the correct choice. I would like to thank Prof. Sumino here once more for his help! The meaning of my name is something like "big village in the city" and carries some positive accent, as I was assured many times during my stay in Japan. The pronunciation is something like TEIMURAZU.
Probably this is a good moment to transfer to my Family name. In Japan, in official papers first comes family name and only then the given name. Soon I've discovered that TEIMURAZU was accounted as my family name and MUCHEDOURIZE (presented here in Katakana) was recognized as the given name.
Sometimes, as “less important” and “complicated” (not suiting the limited spaces in computer forms), my family name was shortened, so I've got new examples for my collection like TEIMURAZU MUCHEDO and even TEIMURAZU Emu (from alphabetic "M"). Nice filing of full unification with Japanese society came to me with the postcard from one Japanese car dealer. There was written casual Japanese surname - TAMURA in kanji, which means a village near the field.
As for my passport, again according to the rules of French language my family name was written as MTCHEDLIDZE. As there were too many consonants in Mtchedlidze, I choose to shorten this name to MCHEDLIDZE and under such name, I'm publishing all my scientific papers. Probably "Mchedlidze" is the most appropriate, but sometimes I got correspondence where this name was written in the Irish manner: "McHEDLIDZE".
And that would be all about my nicknames if I would not have one more and very important name, the name given to me during the christening ceremony. This name is SERGO or SERGEI. My mother, Marina Kovalyova, liked to call me SERYOJA because of that.
Well, you can call me any of the above names, but my preferences are TEIMURAZ MCHEDLIDZE (for official use) or TAI for casual.
For a long time, I haven't made any changes to this page. It wasn't because everybody pronounced my name correctly last time, not at all. However, there were no remarkably new and interesting variants of pronunciation or spelling. But finally, I've got a very interesting variant. An origin of this variant is probably in writing connected letters "Te" in Teimuraz. In this case, with some imagination, one can read these letters as "Fe" instead of "Te". And that was the case in one, very official document issued for me in Germany. Thus, I've got a document for "Feimuraz Mtchedlidze"! I really like it; it's in the middle between Teimuraz and "famous". A good example for my collection, thanks! In Germany, I've also got a variation of "Tai" as THAI (not very surprising, but for the first time).
For Germany for the correct pronunciation one probably needs to spell my family name like MTSCHEDLIDZE, here "tsch" should be pronounced as one sound like in Deutsch. Besides that in German Tei equals Tai in other languages ("ei" in German reds like "ai"). Because of that in my "short " name I've also returned to TEI recently (you can pronounce it as you like!).