'Gurp'

To be born with an odd or funny-sounding name seems at first like a curse, but for the strong and irony-minded it turns into a blessing. My paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, probably didn’t look at it that way. When he emigrated from Poland early in the twentieth century, his surname was Kurpiewski, an ungainly mouthful for most Americans. Late in the teens, after serving in the U.S. Army in Europe, he shortened the name to Kurp, a mere four letters, and yet it’s remarkable how often the word is misspelled and mispronounced. I’ve often been mistaken for an heir to the German arms manufacturing fortune. Nor do I make espresso machines. 

We learned early as kids that Kurp rhymes with burp. And the not-unrelated slurp. And chirp and usurp. Nothing flattering. Later, we added Earp (as in Wyatt and Virgil) to the poetic stockpile. KURP looks like a radio station’s call letters. It’s a blunt name suited for hollering, as by a drill instructor. My middle son came up with Kurpelicious  to describe toothsome foodstuffs, and his boarding-school friends coined Kurpies (rhymes with herpes). Last week, in the Albany, N.Y., airport, my oldest son met a female Kurp whose daughter is the assonantly named Katie Kurp. (Nice to meet you, Katie! Be strong.) The effect of all this linguistic vulnerability is to make Kurps proud and secure in their inheritance.

 

Thanks to John David Cochran, a Marine Corps veteran and convict, I’ve learned there’s even more rhyming fun to be had. In the summer 2021 issue of The Threepenny Review you’ll find his essay titled “Gurp.” His etymology of the word is rather involved and Kurpeliciously distasteful, but worth reading. Let him explain:

 

“Leaving the pill line, inmates are required to open their mouths, lift their tongues, and run their fingers around their gums while a guard examines with a flashlight. Makes it tough to hide a pill. The solution: swallow the pill and don’t take any water with it. After leaving the pill line and making it several feet around the corner of the building . . . gurp . . . up comes the pill. They puke it out.”