I don’t know how unusual my surname is but I’ve never personally met anyone apart from family with the surname “Nicosia“.

I remember years ago going on a trip to Cyprus and when I got to passport control, the official checking my passport commented on my surname and asked me “Did I know that my surname was the same as their capital city?”.

Like I’m not going to know that! The embarrassing thing was there were at least 150 people who had just got off the plane queuing behind me and he called his 3 colleagues from the other queues to come and have a look at my passport. Quite why they were all so excited about this I don’t know. Maybe it’s an uncommon name over there?

My father originates from Sicily so I doubt there is any connection between that and Cyprus. Who knows, maybe I’ll look it up one day?

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