Kipnis.

My local classical station played a piece featuring the once famous harpsichordist Igor Kipnis; my first thought, on hearing the ID, was “He died quite a while back — I wonder if anybody much below my age knows his name any more?” Then came the second thought: “Where’s the name Kipnis from, anyhow?” A Ukrainian Wikipedia page describes several hypotheses: 1) from an alleged Yiddish kypin (given in the Ukrainian spelling кипін) ‘boiling water’ — I can find no evidence of this as a Yiddish word, and it would seem to represent Ukrainian кипіння ‘boiling/seething’ (= Russian кипение) 2) from an alleged Lithuanian ciepes ‘soap,’ but they apparently mean Latvian ziepes (from MLG sepe or Middle Dutch zepe) 3) a Hebraicized form of the Ukrainian surname Кирпоніс [Kirponis] ‘flat-nose’; this is the only suggestion in English Wikipedia They also compare the surnames Tsipnis and Tsipis, which come from the female name Tsip(pora) – Sepphora; I don’t know if this is supposed to be an alternative…