I’ve gone my whole life without meeting anyone else with my last name that I’m not related to. That’s not counting the other Seth Madej that I found on Google who, much to the detriment of my future job prospects, once fronted a band in New Jersey called Master Bater and the Meat Beaters.

But things are different in Poland, where Madej is not an uncommon name. It’s also pronounced in a somewhat logical way, unlike my family’s pronunciation of MADGE-ee, which makes no sense in any language but does lend itself to all sorts of cool hip-hop names like “Seth the Mad G,” or “Your Madejsty.” But in Poland it’s MAH-day, and in fact both there and in Hungary I found that if I told hotel clerks my last name was MAH-day, for the first time in my life I didn’t have to spell it.
More… »