Candidate Knows How to Get Action to Fix an Oft-Misspelled Name

Ken BIberaj via West Side Rag Something was wrong with this sign, as any Thelonious Monk fan could tell you.

A few weeks ago, Ken Biberaj, a candidate for City Council, was preparing for a town-hall meeting to be held in the Amsterdam Houses near a cul-de-sac on West 63rd Street.

The event, scheduled for next Tuesday, is to feature a jazz trio playing songs by Thelonious Monk, who lived for years in a round-floor apartment at 243 West 63rd.

But a volunteer for Mr. Biberaj’s campaign sensed something dissonant about the street sign on the cul-de-sac, which was named for Monk after his death in 1982.

The city named that part of West 63rd “Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle.” But on the sign last month, Monk’s first name was spelled “Thelonius” - without the second O.

Like any good representative, even a prospective one, Mr. Biberaj, a restaurateur whose family owns the Russian Tea Room, sprang to action.

“The Upper West Side is a community that honors both the arts and our cultural icons and no one symbolizes this better than Thelonious Monk,” he wrote on Jan. 15 to the city’s Department of Transportation, urging the agency to fix the sign “in order to properly recognize the legacy of this Jazz legend.”

But no action was taken by the agency by early this week, Mr. Biberaj said. So he notified a local blog, West Side Rag,! which published a post on Tuesday with a photograph of the misspelled sign.

Mr. Biberaj visited the location again on Wednesday around noon. Lo and behold, the sign had been replaced with a correctly spelled one.

Ken BIberaj via West Side Rag Hours after a blog ran an article about the misspelled sign, it was fixed.

“I’m thrilled the D.O.T. took action,” he said, adding, “As councilman, I plan to bring renewd energy to all issues on the West Side, large or small.”

Mr. Biberaj said he was not a big jazz fan - “I may have to become one, after this.” â€" but he used the sign issue to vow that “no issue will be too small” to address, should he win the Council seat.

A spokeswoman for the Transportation Department said that the incorrectly spelled sign was installed in 2011 and that workers replaced it Wednesday with a correctly spelled one. She had no other immediate information on the history of the sign.

Now that the name issue has come up for Monk, City Room e-mailed Phil Schaap, the notably voluble jazz historian who can riff endlessly on almost any jazz musician. He replied that Monk’s name has long been a contentious issue and - well, read the e-mail in its entirety here:

There is a birth record in Rocky Mo! unt, Nort! h Carolina. Monk’s first name is spelled quite differently. I have not seen this document but I have seen different spellings of his given name that cite it. I most trust John Chilton who states in print that this document says “Thellous Junior Monk.”

I further believe Monk, himself, who informs us that his father was Thelonious and that our Monk is, indeed, a Junior. The drumming son is the third (III). I don’t have total faith that “Sphere” was always in place as a family {middle for our Monk} name. Still, Junior as a middle name for a Junior seems unlikely. I would hazard a guess that our Monk’s name at birth was Thelonious Monk, Junior. Limited literacy and racism are likely to have contributed to a flawed birth record.

As to the street. The street sign has recently appeared with a misspelling: “T-h-e-l-o-n-i-u-s”. This was not always so. I was at the street naming and for many years it appeared correctly as “Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle.” It has become one of the moreoften stolen NYC official signs and a replacement eventually carried the misspelling of his given name.

Asked in a follow-up e-mail if Monk was often asked about the spelling of his first name, Mr. Schaap replied:

The dropping of the second “o” in his first name is more common than the correct spelling. It was stated in Monk’s presence that his having a nickel for each time his name was misspelled “Thelonius” would be worth more than the royalties to “Round Midnight.”