I am thinking very likely a Canadian name.
Cyrillic alphabet uses a character much like an upside-down "h" for what we use "ch" to express.
Europeans generally use "cz" for th same sound.
Went to University with a guy named "Kiniski", but his family was from the old Austrian part of Ukraine, spelled it "Kynyckyj": same sound, different conventions.
Just for fun, a bit of Sidney, writing a letter for a couple of Ukrainian sailors he had bought:
"Having gone this far, Sidney decided that he needed a break from the depressing topic of Romans in general, put his treatise for Kaeren away, got out another sheet of paper and began writing.
Sidney of Wintanceastre in England to Father Dmitri of Kursk,
at the Church of Khristos Lord of the World, greetings.
He was writing in Church Slavonic, very similar to Old North Bulgar and able to be understood by nearly all of the Slavic people, even the illiterate and uncultured Pecheneg and Moskaly. And he was using the Cyrillic letters, just to cap things off. Sidney could handle the language with little problem; it was used all over the Slav country and would develop, over time, into an entire family of closely-related languages. No, what really miffed Sidney was the alphabet he was using.
‘I told Cyril and I told Cyril and I bloody well told Cyril,’ he fumed to himself, ‘but would he listen to me? Hell, no! He was going to invent the perfect bloody alphabet and that was all there was to it. Would he listen to me? Would he listen to the dulcet tones of reason? Of sanity, even? Hell, no! No, he started off with ordinary Greek, which is pretty versatile, so he used that for about half of what he wanted. Then he decided that there were so many new sounds that Greek couldn’t handle... and every single one needed its own letter. So he started turning things around and making up new ones and, pretty soon, he ran out of shapes, so he made tiddy little changes to symbols he already had and the damned thing grew and grew until, right now, it’s just about double the length of Greek and there are so many letters that it takes a genius to remember them all. Oh, well; some day, someone will get the idea and cut it back to about three dozen. That’s still a dozen more than most people need. But something has to be done: either chop off some letters or chop off some heads. Anything. Just get this damned thing usable! Right now, the only one I know that’s worse is Amharic and that doesn’t really matter because almost nobody there can read. Of course, that might be the reason. Here, too, come to think of it. Some day, I suppose, but it can’t come fast enough for me.’"
Fortunately, the Cyrillic alphabet has undergone at least two complete sets of modifications and shortning since that time.... but it still can be confusing to Westerners.
