family
The Chekhovs
the Chekhovs
also: Чеховы
The collective signature Chekhov's household used when the whole family sent a brief congratulatory note or telegram together, rather than Chekhov writing alone.
Reading notes
- To A. A. Kiselev, 17 September 1891. Moscow. §3 The Chekhovs
The collective signature Chekhov's household used on brief congratulatory telegrams, sent in the name of the whole family rather than himself alone.
- To the Chekhovs, 24 April 1890. Kama, parokhod "Perm--Nizhny". §3 My friends, my Tungus!
"Тунгусы" (Tunguses/Tungus) is the Chekhov household's own long-running private nickname for itself, used here as the letter's salutation-equivalent opening address, exactly as in the companion letter ("Друзья мои тунгусы"). It borrows the name of a real Siberian people (now more often called the Evenki) purely as a piece of family whimsy -- there is no ethnographic content or reference to actual Tungus people anywhere in the letter, and no register of mockery attaches to the borrowing; it functions the way a pet name or in-joke does, not as a statement about the Tungus themselves. Kept as "Tungus" rather than translated or glossed away, since the joke depends on the reader recognizing it as a real, faraway ethnonym pressed into affectionate domestic service.
- To the Chekhovs, 1891. Vienna. §3 My dear Czechs!
\textit{Друзья мои чехи} -- "my friends the Czechs." A pun on "Чехов"/"Chekhov" and "чех"/"Czech" (the two words share the same root stem), addressed to his own family: playful family wordplay, not a reference to any actual Czechs, and not directed at any ethnic group as such -- an affectionate nonsense-nickname in the same spirit as the "Tungus" of \S4, rendered plainly in English to preserve the joke rather than softened or flagged as if it were a genuine slur.
- To the Chekhovs, 1891. Vienna. §4 Ah, my dear Tungus
\textit{тунгусы} -- "Tungus," the old Russian name for the Evenki people of Siberia. A second nonsense-address to the family, this one with no pun basis at all (unlike "Czechs"/"Chekhov" in \S3) -- pure absurdist affection, continuing the letter's running joke of addressing his household by increasingly random ethnonyms rather than by name.
- To the Chekhovs, 1891. Venice. §13 My friends the Tungus, let us convert to Catholicism
\textit{Друзья мои тунгусы} repeats, verbatim, the mock-ethnonym address to the family from the Vienna letter written five days earlier; there it was pure absurdist affection with no comic motive supplied. Here Chekhov gives it a fresh comic pretext -- overwhelmed by Venice's church organs and sculpture, he jokes about converting to Catholicism -- continuing the same running family in-joke rather than introducing a new one.