What's In One Brick Resident's Name?

"Sgroi" is a unique name.

Aside from the thousands of names kids teased me with growing up, not many know the true meaning of SGROI. Well here's what I’ve come to know thanks to other SGROIs out there. Enjoy! 

My family came from Palermo, Sicily. The Sgroi's decided to come to America via Ellis Island during the early 1900s. As far as I know, my relatives settled in Queens and Brooklyn. My immediate family and I moved to Brick from a section of Brooklyn called Canarsie in 1986. Since then, I've seen some Sgroi’s here in New Jersey, but for the most part, I'm not related to them. So finding out what my last name meant was tough. That is until the internet came about.

A fellow Sgroi named Chester created the website www.sgroi.com in honor of the name. The site said that "Sgroi" came from a Greek name "Sguros" which means "man with hair like rings" or in other words "curly hair". I did have curly hair as a baby, but it straightened out by the time I was  two. However, I am a big fan of Curly from the Three Stooges (who were introduced to me by my dad, a fellow Sgroi!). They are reason I got into comedy!  I think at the time of its origin, these "curly haired" people were living in southern Calabria, Italy which is close to Sicily.  Sguros became Sgroi when the combination of letters "os" changed to"oi".  Many believed that Sgroi was shortened at Ellis Island, but I haven’t found that to be true. 

There is also a meaning of Sgroi that was found to be untrue. Some thought "Sgr" was a surname like "Mr." Sgr was short for signor (or monsignor). Signor is Italian for mister, but its literal translation is "My lord". The "roi" is French for "king" so Sgroi was thought to mean "My lord the king". This seems to make sense but is false.

Of course, there is the story from my second cousin Richard who asked his Italian  teacher if Sgroi meant "my lord the king", and if it had to do with Italian royalty. She replied to him that was false, and our family was probably a bunch of grape squashers for wine. So, I realized that the S and G could have stood for "Squashing Grapes", Roi was king, therefore, Sgroi could have meant we were "King of the grape squashers!!!" 

In my stand up routine, I talk about how I have to spell my name out phonetically on the phone to people.

The first three letters are easy. I say:

"S as in Sam, G as in George, R as in Robert..."

The last two letters is where it gets tough. "O as in... Oscar. I as in... ... Ice Cream?"

The operator usually asks, "Ice cream?!?"

"Uhhh, Ichabod?" I reply.

"Who the heck is Ichabod???" she'll ask.

"Ichabod, you know, that was the name of Bill Cosby's marker on Picture Page. Do you remember that show? No?" I respond.

"Look, are you going to buy the Sham-Wow or not?!?" she asks.

Sometimes, if I'm angry or tired of dealing with the operator, I get all political with it.

"YEAH S as in SEGREGATION, G as in GAS PRICES, R as in RACISM!!!"

They hang up after that. Saves me from credit collectors.