Woman Doesn't Know How to Pronounce Her Rare Last Name Shared by Only 20 Known Relatives (Exclusive)

Katie Garapic made a TikTok looking for advice about how to accurately say her Croatian surname

• Katie Garapic realized she may be mispronouncing her Croatian last name while watching the Olympics. Athletes from the neighboring Serbia spelled their names "-ić," which implies a "-ch" sound at the end

• Since few people share the name, Garapic took to TikTok to see if anyone could offer some expertise about the Croatian language, though the pronunciation of her surname largely remains a mystery

• She tells PEOPLE she has no plans to change her name, despite the confusion. Garapic and her new wife plan to continue her European family legacy by hyphenating their last names when they're married

Katie Garapic is having an identity crisis that spans generations and continents: she isn't sure how to actually pronounce her last name.

Garapic, 27, took to TikTok to share how the dilemma occurred to her while she was watching the Olympics, though she tells PEOPLE her family has discussed the pronunciation since she was a child. She saw that many of the athletes from Serbia — which neighbors her family's country of origin, Croatia — had last names that also end in "-ic," but their names were spelled with an accent over the last letter.

As Garapic explained in her TikTok post, her relatives pronounce their name "GAIR-uh-pick," but the letter "ć" is pronounced as "-ch." And she noted that she actually prefers the accented sound: "I want that back," Garapic quipped in her video.

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She tells PEOPLE that her great-grandfather emigrated from Croatia to the U.S. around 1896, and she's been told their family name was likely "Americanized" then, hence the evolved pronunciation.

"We'll never know if he chose to change the spelling himself or if someone simply left the 'accent' off the 'c' on his arrival paperwork," she shares. Thanks to TikTok, she actually learned that the letter "ć" isn't just an accented character. Garapic clarifies, "It's actually its own separate letter in the Croatian alphabet."

The confusion is further complicated by the fact that there aren't many living Garapics with whom to compare pronunciations. According to the Tennessee-based TikToker, her aunt and uncle have done AncestryDNA kits and discovered only 20 known relatives with the name and some possible Garapic cousins clustered in the Midwest.

Her video did help make connections and some new discoveries about the name. One person reached out simply to say she played cards with Garapic's aunt in the 1980s. Someone else said they knew someone in Ohio with the name, though that person pronounces it the same way the creator does. Another TikTok user helped Garapic understand how she might hear it said in Croatia.

"The last syllable would be pronounced 'itch,' and the 'r' would be rolled to make a soft 't' sound, kind of like 'Gotta-pitch!'" she recalls of the advice she received from viewers. "I have determined how each of the letters in my name are supposed to sound, but there's still some discourse over which syllable gets the emphasis."

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She notes that strangers rarely pronounce it the way she does. "The conversation in my TikTok comments made it clear that it's more intuitive for a majority of people to stress the middle syllable, 'Guh-RAP-ick,' so I've been much more open to people pronouncing it that way," she says.

(Strangers usually don't spell it right either, says Garapic: "My personal favorite was an email addressed to Ms. Katie Garlic!")

Largely, Garapic tells PEOPLE she's still looking for answers in solving the mystery of her surname. She's hoping a native speaker will duet the video so she can hear it said properly out loud. On the recommendation of another commenter, Garapic did phone the Croatian Embassy, but her nerves got the best of her.

"I got phone-shy and hung up, so I may never know," she jokes.

Ultimately, Garapic says her name is such a significant part of her identity that she doesn't foresee changing the pronunciation anytime soon. In fact, she recently got married, and she and her wife plan to hyphenate their names.

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"We've always thought the Garapic name would end with us, so my sister committed at a very young age to keep our last name when she gets married," she says, adding, "My [wife's] last name is York, so she's in for a treat as someone who has never had her name mispronounced in her life."

Garapic and her sister are considering using the letter "ć" in writing for posterity's sake, but not in any official way.

"I'd never pursue a legal name change over one letter," adds Garapic. "But the ć does look great in my email signature!"

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