Unexpected discovery

As I am sure that most of you are aware, my parents named me after a character in a psychedelic and haunting Elton John song from his pre-pop icon years of the early seventies. When people ask me what my name means, or where it comes from, I usually mention the song, but I have never been able to answer questions pertaining to its origin; I would suggest that it might have originally been French, or even Jewish. Well a couple of weeks ago I accidentally discovered what nationality it originates from, and the answer was a bit of a surprise.

I was on another of my short day trips with the guru of travel Ed and his newly acquired disciple Jasim. Ed arrived in Istanbul with Scott and Mark a few weeks ago as they came by to see the city and visit with me. They met him on the train and they generally stayed together in Eminonu while they were here. When Scott and Mark left, Ed was soon to follow, but not before him and I walked around a bit and saw some of the cooler parts of the city. However, he came back after a couple of weeks on the Mediterranean coast. This time though, he was accompanied by a friend from Baghdad named Jasim, who is now living in Jordan (and who has pictures of himself all over Istanbul to prove that he was here).

Ed the American travel guru

Ed is a real Turkophile, he speaks so highly of the city and the country. He has been here a few times before, so his admiration has proceeded beyond the initial romance. He loves the place because he has been all over and he finds much here worthy of respect and lauding. Generally, he likes to wander around the city and develop an internal map of the city that is far more reliable than city maps for reasons I have previously mentioned. So I have been lucky to accompany him on a few of these excursions, seeing wonderful places that I would never have thought to see otherwise.

On the particular trip of interest we went to the area called Kadikoy, which would have been part of the old city of Chalcedon, of the Chalcedonian council. It was a smaller city that was founded before Byzantium on the opposite side of the Bosphorus. It has always been an important sister city of to Byzantium, but is now incorporated into the larger city. We had taken a short ferry from the main docks in old Constantinople then wandered around the shops and markets of the Kadikoy streets. After seeing the statue of a bull at the main intersection Ed asked where we wanted to go next. He showed me a map of the area and pointed to a church called Levon, and asked if I wanted to see it. I was naturally curious, so we walked the short couple of blocks over.

Do you think it is a coincidence that my church is located in the main literary haunt in Istanbul?

The narrow side street that it was on was guarded buy this statue of a man on top of a stack of books. I now gather that the street is famous for being a gathering point for poets and artists as it contained some of the nicest little kiosks where genuine artists sold unique crafts. It also had the Nazim Hikmet cultural center. Hikmet was one of the most important Turkish poets of the twentieth century. I have taken the time to read some of his works and have not been disappointed in the slightest.

Anyway, the church bearing my name was behind some large walls with a rather uninviting door blocking the way. Most churches here have court yards and locked fences; it has not always been safe to practice Christianity here, especially as an Armenian or a Greek. The church was called Surp Levon and it is an Armenian Catholic Church (apparently the only Armenian Catholic Church in the city, for most of them are Orthodox). So there it is, my name is Armenian and it is the name of a saint. I looked up the name in an Armenian encyclopedia, but could not find references to the saint although I did find numerous other Armenian Levons.
I also discovered that it is linguistically linked with the Russian name Leon, which I suspect is from the Greek word of the same pronunciation meaning lion. So now I have a more complete knowledge of this unusual name that has had no small impact on my life. I am Levon the lion.