VAS Littlecrow The official website of Reverend Vanesa Littlecrow Wojtanowicz

What’s a Vas Littlecrow? Is that your real name or is it Vanesa Littlecrow

The short answer: Vanesa Littlecrow is a small part of a real name so long, that it doesn’t fit into my social security card. Vas Littlecrow is my nickname, and VAS Littlecrow is the name of my business.

A more complete answer about my nickname: Vas is a play on words. It means “going” in Spanish, which alludes to the fact that I am always on the go. It also is a shortening of Vasquez which is a nickname created from a combination of the sounds in my maiden name. Following this so far?

Vasquez is also short for Velasquez which is a variant of Belasques which is a Sephardic Jewish word which could mean either “dweller of the Basque country” or “dweller of the little crow’s land.”

This naturally brings us to Littlecrow which is a shortened and loose English translation of my “grown-up” Taino name given to me by a special friend who shall remain anonymous.

The Littlecrow portion of my name is not the most flattering, because I was being compared to Chief Little Crow in the context of being a brilliant and talented “cultural sellout”. The fact that I’m related to Christopher Columbus and come from a politically unpopular Taino clan doesn’t help either in terms of my Amerind heritage.

Still, I cherish the name because of the lessons contained within, and because I actually have a ton of respect for Little Crow. For this reason I kept it, but I shortened the translation Littlecrow for simplicity’s sake. Nifty, huh? Coincidentally enough, VAS Littlecrow also stands for “Visual Art Services by Littlecrow.”

And just in case you were curious, the Rasputin Catamite character, Bahktale "Lucky" Vasquez, is in fact named after me.