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The Kosman family
crest from the most recognized sources. Before an artist or craftsman can
render a family crest, it must exist. In other words the crest must have
been designed and recorded by the heralds from time immemorial.
Or rather, our great ancestors the
marmoset, which in Czech is Kosman? |
Spelling variations of this family name include: Cosmas,
Cosmos, Kosmin, Kosmas, Cosimo, Cosumano, Gosmin, Gosmas, Kusmin, Kusmas and
many more.
First found in Silesia, where the name gained a significant reputation for
its contribution to the emerging mediaeval society.
Kosman
- Czech and Polish: from an altered form of the Greek personal name
Kosmas (a derivative of Greek kosmos ‘order’, ‘universe’),
borne by an early Christian saint martyred in Cilicia in
ad 303 under the emperor
Domitian, together with his brother Damian.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic): from the Jewish personal name Kosman,
borrowed from German Christians.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic): occupational name for someone who made glasses
or cups, from Hebrew kos ‘drinking glass’ or Yiddish kos
‘goblet’, ‘cup’ + man ‘man’. See also
Kos.
Kos
- Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, and Polish: nickname from kos
‘blackbird’, denoting someone thought to resemble the bird in some way,
for example someone with a good singing voice (or perhaps our big and
famous beaks?). This is a very common
surname in Slovenia and Croatia.
- Czech and Sorbian (Koš): metonymic occupational name for a
basketmaker, from koš ‘basket’.
- German (Kös): possibly a nickname for a gossip or a smooth-talker,
from Middle High German kose, koese ‘talk’, ‘chat’.
Compare
Koser.
- Jewish (Ashkenazic): of uncertain origin. It may be an ornamental
name from Slavic kos ‘blackbird’, as in 1, or alternatively it
may be from Hebrew kos ‘drinking glass’ or Yiddish kos
‘goblet’, ‘cup’, probably applied as a metonymic occupational name for
someone who made glasses or cups. (Well, we do like to drink a lot of,
er..)
- Dutch: from a Zeeland personal name derived from Constantius
(see
Constant).
- Hungarian (Kós): from a Turkish loanword kos ‘ram’ (from Old
Turkish qoc, Ottoman Turkish qoç); perhaps a metonymic
occupational name for a shepherd but more probably a nickname for
someone thought to resemble the animal.
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So as far as I’ve collected (as told by my aunt Jana), there was some mad
German Albino genius named Wotzel, a choleric.
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He was a judge and remembered all the laws in his head, but he was also a
mad degenerate, a small little man who tyrannised his entire family. He used to take home prostitutes
and all sorts of tramps and bums, and forced his wife, a Jew, to bring in lots
of cash from her Jewish connections. Growing up in such an environment, the two
kids, Jana and her
brother Theodore, had two dogs who they antagonised against each
other and thought it was great fun, or they would shoot apples off each others’
heads with a rifle. Theodore was a bit of an albino and liked Indians, and
eventually moved away to America and became friends with the Dakotans,
never to be heard from again. Wotzel's
Jewish wife soon died, probably because he wore her to death, so her
daughter my great-grandma Jana (Baba Jana, as my aunt likes to call her),
who was about 15 at the time, went to live with her rich aunt
and uncle. Because the
doctor said that Baba Jana was from a degenerate family, they found an almost
primitive but healthy bridegroom for her, who was Karel Kosman I, the first in a
subsequent chain. He was pretty tall, and Jana was really short – about 150cm
tall. The first child, Viktor Kosman, was also very tall and Baba Jana loved him
very much. My grandfather, Karel Kosman II, was the second son and very
aggressive like his grandfather Wotzel, and would beat up Viktor, even
though Karel was small and four years the younger.
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About the first and very tall Kosman: the rich aunt with the rich uncle had great and
influential friends and later moved to Vienna, where they often spoke German at
home. This Kosman was a poor sod because Baba Jana would commandeer him and
often would throw things at him. Baba Jana was a half Jew and feared for the
lives of her two sons, and some of our relatives
eventually died in German concentration camps.
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My father, Karel Kosman III, had it well, their household had a maid, and he was
also considered
a genius, because in school he calculated everything in his head, and
often faster than the teachers. During the second world war he had to falsify
his documents because Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews up to second
generation. He acquired an education as an electronic engineer, and when the
communists came after the war, he adjusted his radio to focus all its waves so
that he could catch news from the west, which he subsequently printed and
distributed on the streets from his motorbike.
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After the Prague Spring and when the communists rolled in to "save
us", we packed up all our stuff and scrammed for the border. The communists gave
all rebel rousers till midnight to get out of the country (better to let such
elements out now than to deal with an underground movement later), so at the age
of 26, I at the age of 3 and half and my sister at the age of 2, we went with
our mom in our 2 cylinder Lada, packed up our stuff, and made a dart for
the border. But the Czechs, in their miscalculated endeavour to slow down the
Russian tanks, littered the roadways with nails and my father had to patch up
our tires six times. At some point we got to a fork in the road and
stepped out to
ask a neighbouring home which way to go, but they were hiding inside in fear and
did not come out to guide us. So we took a wild guess and made it to the border
by 3 in the morning. Very afraid, we handed the border guards our documents, but
they just smiled and let us go on our way.
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After making it through the Alps with our two cylinders, we hooked up in
Switzerland with all the other Czechs to compare stories. When we told them
what time we made it past the border, everyone started distancing themselves
from us, assuming that we must be communist spies. So we pulled out
and compared our maps and
it turns out that the road we took from the fork was not on the Russian map. So
I guess I am fortunate to have grown up in the west by a mere 50% chance.
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My mom didn’t like how in Switzerland everyone was separated by status, and
she always dreamed of Vancouver, in Canada which many Czechs look on in
fondness, since they love freedom and nature, so we went to Canada, but my dad
instead found a job in Ottawa at Bell Northern Research, working on fibre
optics. We stayed in Ottawa 12 years, and Canada for a long time has led the
world in fibre optics.
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My parents eventually separated, my mom finally getting a chance to move to
her beloved Vancouver, and my dad eventually moved to Colorado where he started
a company hooking up fibre optic cables to the computer and which he eventually
sold to IBM.
He later got a job dishing out millions of dollars as part of US Aid to the
Czech Republic following the fall of communism, and was the president of various
investment companies during the country’s transformation to capitalism.
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About a year after he moved back is when I came to
Prague. He is Karel Kosman III and I
am IV, but we would both just use our simplified versions on our business cards.
Not having such a rich background in education and experience as he, I tried my
luck with several ideas in venture entrepreneurialism, such as starting a
waterbed emporium or a modelling agency (Czech girls are very
beautiful). I made a studio in my apartment and
would often hand out pink business cards to attractive females inviting them to
a photo shoot back in my flat. My dad would plead with me to put Karel Kosman Jr.,
or SOMETHING distinguishing on my business cards, but this felt too derogatory
and I respectfully declined. He told me that he often got approached by people
with puzzled looks asking him about his various other activities, considering
how small a town Prague really is.
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So I'm Karel Kosman IV. Karel is the Czech spelling of Karl and is drawn
from the word "Kral", which means king, as in
King
Charles IV, who was emperor of Europe with his seat in Prague at its
height in history when it was one of the largest and most developed of
European cities. During some depression, he applied demand side Keynesian
economics by building a bridge across the river to what is called the Small
Side (Mala Strana). This helped trade, and the local farmers, since he used
eggs for cement. It is the historic
Charles bridge,
and being Charles IV myself, I occasionally like to holler, "Hey, get off my
bridge!"
The Kosman family tree
and in Excel file
format. You can download it and add stuff to send it back to me
so that I could update it online, or just send me info/pics and I'll add it myself. |
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Kosman - the Czech word for Marmoset
The Kosman monkey or Marmoset (some friends like to
call me Kosmankey) is the smallest monkey in the
world, growing to a robust 20 cm in height (about 8 inches) and 125 g in weight.
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Their small size might be attributed to the fact that they like to "hang
out" in the upper canopy of trees, in the jungles of South America, where
they feed on insects, fruit and leaves. In not only their size they are
peculiar to other primates by the fact that they have claws instead of nails
(so they can bore holes into the trunks of trees to feed on tree gum,
another part of their diet) and due to their social structure, which is more
akin to some birds than other monkey. Most of their species often produce
twins, and sometimes triplets, and the offspring, the female more than the
male, tend to stay with their parents well past adulthood to help out with
rearing other children. They do not produce their own offspring until they
leave their parents. The Kosman monkey is generally very attentive when
rearing their young and they like to hang around in groups of around a
dozen. They are also well known for their liveliness and theatrics,
constantly "monkeying around", making goofy faces, and something which seems
to have been passed in sincere measure to our own generation.
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