That's terrible! Somebody's name could be Ken O'Hara.
It means "evil eye." Saying it out loud and spitting through your fingers wards off the evil eye. Golde does it in Fiddler.
My grandmother used to do it when we came to visit her apartment in the Bronx. There was a spinster woman across the alley way who would look out her kitchen window when other women's grandchildren were visiting, and she would give try to give us the "kinnehora."
My grandmother would always draw all the curtains when we visited so the spinster lady couldn't see us. It was always very dark at Grandma's, even during the day.