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"Mr. Icon" or just "Icon" is a nickname of Konstantin Ryabitsev, a fine gent born in Yekaterinburg, Russia, now living in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Recently, this nickname has been retired to be only used in online resources. In meatspace, people use the real first name "Konstantin."
[edit] Nickname etymology
Back in his youth, Konstantin used to work as an interpreter for various American groups coming to Russia. Some of them found the name "Konstantin" to be too long to use in regular speech, so they shortened it to "Kon," which, of course, means a "horse" in Russian, a "convict" in colloquial English, and an "idiot" in French. However, back then Konstantin was blissfully unaware of the latter two meanings, so he allowed this nickname to stick. Then someone greeted him "Hi, Kon," the other noted that it sounded a lot like "icon," and thus the new, modified version of the nickname got born and quickly replaced the "Kon."
The "Mr." part of "Mr. Icon" got added when Konstantin was working with children at a summer camp in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina.
[edit] Pronunciation
- Russian: /kʌn.stʌn.'tʲin 'rʲæ.bʲi.ʦəf/ (Константин Рябицев)
- English: /'kɑn.stən.ˌtiːn 'ɹæ.bit.səf/ (Kons-tun-teen Rab-bit-seff)
[edit] External links
[edit] Affiliations
