Think Again:

The best place to start a new column is with a little story about yourself.

My father was an executive in a large U.S. corporation that moved our family around the U.S., Europe and the world. When people ask where I’m from, it’s tough to answer without giving my life history, starting with my birth city, Boston. But the longest we lived in one place was in northern Virginia, outside Washington, D.C.

As we moved around internationally, I never thought about my name. Everyone had different names from various cultures, and as kids, the differences never mattered. When overseas, one thing was clear: I was an American, and I was proud of it. In fact, I even got into a few schoolyard scuffles defending it. Then, as we hit different U.S. cities and I was growing older, my name started sticking out, and I found myself having to explain it, spell it and get people to pronounce it.

When I was in high school in northern Virginia, I was a member of the Armenian Youth Federation. One of my mentors, who was a federation alumnus, U.S. Air Force veteran and worked at the Pentagon at the time, wanted our group to learn how the U.S. Congress and our democracy works. So we started by setting up meetings to get to know our congressional representatives. At the time, Republican Rep. Frank Wolf represented me. He still serves in Congress to this day.

I put on my best Sunday suit to meet Wolf in the Cannon House Office Building. When I walked into his office, I confidently approached him and said, “Hello, congressman, my name is Zanku Armenian.”

The congressman exchanged greetings, but then asked, “What is your name again?”

I replied, “My name is Zanku Armenian.”

He replied again, this time sounding a bit frustrated and said, “I understand you’re Armenian, but what is your name?”

“Congressman, that is my name, ‘Zanku Armenian,’ but let’s make things simpler; just call me Zanku,” I said.

At that moment, Wolf finally made the connection, and we laughed and moved on to our discussion.

That was the East Coast. Now fast forward to my move to Glendale, via a couple of years in the Bay Area. Now I found myself confronted by a whole different dilemma, this time with my first name. Everywhere I go in Los Angeles, and especially in Glendale, whenever I introduce myself, people think I’m the owner of Zankou Chicken.

While Zankou Chicken has given my first name wide public recognition, I have yet to meet or hear of another person named Zanku. Now I constantly correct people’s spelling of my name, and I endure the same funny situation where every introduction is about whether I own Zankou Chicken. “Zanku” is the name of a river that flows through Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.

At the Zankou Chicken store that recently opened in Montebello, the owner of that store wouldn’t believe me when I told him my name is “Zanku.” Upon showing him my ID, his jaw dropped, and I got a yellow Zankou Chicken T-shirt out of the deal. Certainly my hats off to the successful Zankou Chicken business, but I had the name before they had the chicken, so I ought to be getting royalties out of the deal, don’t you think?

Now while I did grow up near Maryland for some years, home to Purdue Farms with Frank Purdue’s motto, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” I am not the tender chicken man, or for those who know me, anything but chicken.

It is with the theme of provoking fresh thinking in mind that I hope you’ll find the column worth the read in the months ahead.

Get in touch ZANKU ARMENIAN is a Glendale resident and a corporate communications professional. He can be reached at zanku.armenian@gmail.com.