Ex NY Governor George Pataki

choi

Jim Dwyer, Pataki Keeps His Own Counsel on Matters of Family and Citizenship. New York Times, May 29, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/nyreg ... nd-citizenship.html

Quote:

"Mr Pataki, who served three terms as the governor of New York, announced Thursday [May 28] that he would run in the New Hampshire [Republican's presidential] primary.

"Mr Pataki said[,] 'My grandmother came over from Ireland on her sister’s papers.'  His maternal grandmother was Agnes Lynch from County Louth; her sister had applied to immigrate but changed her mind. Agnes simply took her papers and sailed to New York as if she were the sister. That had to be illegal in any number of ways, Mr Pataki said. * * * His [Pataki's] paternal grandparents were Hungarian, part of the early 20th century tide of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Mr Pataki said one of his uncles was a 'German sailor' who jumped ship in New York and never went back.  Both his Irish grandmother and ship-jumping uncle eventually became United States citizens.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) In the phrase "keeps one's own counsel," counsel is defined as "deliberation by merriam-webster.com, and as "private opinions or plans" by collinsdictionary.com.

(c)
(i) The surname Pataki is a variant of Pataky.
(ii) The Hungarian and Jewish surname Pataky: "for someone from any of several places in Hungary called Patak, or a topographic name for someone who lived near a creek"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press
(iii) patak (n): "stream, brook"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/patak