It’s Biblical and means, “One who stands in judgement of God.” The Bible’s Daniel is taken prisoner by King Nebuchadnezzar and held in Babylon where he becomes a loyal and hard working servant. In my life, I married the writer Molly McNett and moved to her family’s farm where I maintain a louche existence of sloth and self-indulgence.

My last name—sometimes referred to as a “surname” even though that’s confusing—is Libman. There is no direct translation, but in Belarusian, “Libman” is generally understood to mean, “He who keeps the grudge on behalf of the village.”

It was the job of the Libman to not let any insult, whether egregious or inconsequential, fade into memory. If two families were about to merge via marriage or business transaction, the elders called upon a Libman to remind the community of any past land-boundary disputes, long forgotten insults muttered at market, or any unresolved emotional traumas. A village with a really good Libman would have literally zero cordiality amongst the populace, which is why the universal symbol for “Libman” is a palms open, finger splayed, shoulder shrug, as in, “I won’t speak to those people over there, I don’t remember why but what can you do?”

This tradition carried on in the new world. Libmans were used by early colonialists to maintain property lines and civility among overlapping government units. In hobo times, a freight car stowaway might draw a crude \__O__/ symbol in chalk on the fence post, which meant roughly: “A Libman lives here, be on your best behavior; owner has a long memory and no pie.”