I remember sitting on my couch one day watching “Denying Rusyn Identity: The “Ruthenian” Word”, a video on YouTube, and coming away impressed with the explanation of why we should be proud to use Ruthenian only instead of adding “Carpathian”. This show of nationalism made me very proud of who my baba was and where my family came from in Poland. We don’t let anybody talk down to us. As time goes on I am less impressed. I now believe that it is a bad idea.

By only using Ruthenian we are claiming the entire history of Ruthenians for ourselves. This is not okay or correct. If you haven’t noticed by now, that is what Putin and the oligarchs of Russia doing with Ukraine right now. Okay, I am not that stupid, but it is still not a good idea. Using that word confuses so many people that we should realize how dumb that is. Carpatho-Rusyn history is not the same history from Ukraine, so it should have a different word. The Romans and Byzantines called themselves the same, but everybody uses different words. Time passed and they were different enough to be called differently. Putting Carpatho before the Rusyn declares this in that exact way, saying that this is a different thing.

All of my street when I was a kid was Carpatho-Rusyn or pretty close to it. The next one over was full of Ukrainians and Belarusians. We would all go to the church down the road that served the entire neighborhood. When my family would talk to other people using their people’s language Ukrainians barely understood a word. We just knew that those people were different even though the name was the same. Easy world example to show you that it is time for a difference.

Young people like the author of that video need to know that being different is something that doesn’t need to be hurtful. You can be different without claiming other countries’ history or trying to hold onto some no-good left-out gravy fries. Carpatho-Rusyns is good enough on its own and different enough too. Those of us in our forties and fifties know so much more that people like that can gain from. Also, a lot of us suck so I cannot blame young people too much.

To conclude, stop being so caught up in names and passion to realize that sometimes people just need to move on. Think of it as ending a relationship. People just change, and after that breakup, we no longer call them our spouse but something else. Time to break up with just using that stuff.