A question regarding names of Russian figure skaters | Page 3 | Golden Skate

A question regarding names of Russian figure skaters

Joined
Jun 21, 2003
The boxer George Foreman has five sons. Their names are George Jr, George III, George IV, George V and George VI.

I know a brother and sister whose names are "Maxhn" and "Jo-ine" Their parents' names were Maxine and John. Maxhn had a terrible time as a child growing up in a small midwestern town in the 1950s because this was the height of the cold war and everyone thought that "Maxhn" sounded like a "communist" name.

Former US figure skater Naomi Nari Nam :love: has a sister, who also skated some, named Naomi Nami Nam.
 

el henry

Go have some cake. And come back with jollity.
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The boxer George Foreman has five sons. Their names are George Jr, George III, George IV, George V and George VI.

I know a brother and sister whose names are "Maxhn" and "Jo-ine" Their parents' names were Maxine and John. Maxhn had a terrible time as a child growing up in a small midwestern town in the 1950s because this was the height of the cold war and everyone thought that "Maxhn" sounded like a "communist" name.

Former US figure skater Naomi Nari Nam :love: has a sister, who also skated some, named Naomi Nami Nam.

And everyone remembers all the Georges precisely because it is, well, unusual to have so many Georges:laugh: Or the boy girl twins I went to high school with, Lee and Lee. Or the kids on my street, Ann and Maryann from the same family.

But everyone thought their parents were either fixated, or drunk;)

ETA: But I didn't know about the Nam sisters. Now they were just cool:)
 
Last edited:

MarthaBee

Rinkside
Joined
Feb 28, 2019
Everybody still pronounces his name wrong. His name In Russian is Коляда - the "я" is often spelt as a y in English, but it makes more of an "ee" sound - so you would say his name Kolida - Kol-eee-da. Of course Wikipedia has it different to this, but this is my understanding of the Russian language.

His wifes name is Дарья Дмитриевна Беклемищева - She has not changed her name since Marrying Mikhail.
If somebody who is RUssian could point out Daria's married name, then I would love to know as I'm trying to get to grips with Russian.
I do believe it would remain the same if she took his last name, which hasn't been updated anywhere I've seen.

She's Daria Kolyada on twitter: https://twitter.com/DariaKolyada1
 

Elana

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 19, 2018
The boxer George Foreman has five sons. Their names are George Jr, George III, George IV, George V and George VI.

I know a brother and sister whose names are "Maxhn" and "Jo-ine" Their parents' names were Maxine and John. Maxhn had a terrible time as a child growing up in a small midwestern town in the 1950s because this was the height of the cold war and everyone thought that "Maxhn" sounded like a "communist" name.

Former US figure skater Naomi Nari Nam :love: has a sister, who also skated some, named Naomi Nami Nam.

Geez I didn’t realize how common this was, guess it’s not just a Russian thing! Still think it’s a bit strange and confusing to name your kids the same/similar names, but to each their own I guess.
 

lariko

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Jan 31, 2019
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Canada
What confuses me more are the diminutive of names, like Alexandra/Sasha

When Russia became Orthodox Christian nation, the Slavonic names were for the most part lost, though for many centuries, you still have Slavonic name that meant something to the Russian ear coexisting with the Christian mostly Greek-derived names. So as late as sixteenth century you still have Malyuta rather that Grigori Skuratov (Slavonic ‘private’ name preferred over his official Christian name). The pool of given names became very small and very foreign, so the Russian developed a huge number of diminutives for each popular name that sounded more along the lines of Russian, were shorter or just more pleasing than the Greek and allowed to tell one Yelena from five others.

There are dozens of version of the most popular names like Yelena or Aleksey, from common to unusual. Like all nations, Russians are not immune to fashionable name trends, so sometimes you see lots of Latin names cropping up, sometimes the Slavonic ones come back (most of them have a drawback of sounding too much because they are pretty princely, so there is a risk of ending up with a snooty snivelling brat called WrathfulGlory on your hands), sometimes it is the status quo of the Greek-derived top ten.
 

Alex65

Final Flight
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Aug 11, 2018
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Russia
So my question is. Who decides whether you are a sasha or an alexei. Your parents?

Perhaps you meant the question: Sasha or Alexander?
I will try to answer as I understand this question. Sasha as a full name does not exist in Russia. At least I have not met. In official documents, this is always Alexander (or Alexandra if you are a woman). If your name is Alexander, then all people will call you Sasha, while you are a child or young. When you grow up, only close people and friends will call you Sasha. For everyone else, you will be Alexander.
 

vorravorra

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Joined
Apr 9, 2016
My assumption on this score is that it developed in Russia after the 1990s, perhaps this is due to the appearance of computers in governing bodies. At this time, the letters ё and e became equal. No one paid attention to the spelling of words. It affected me personally. Almost 25 years after the registration of the marriage, I had to write an application to change my last name and draw up new documents, because my last name in the passport was Fёdorov, but my wife and my sons Fedorov. And now these are different surnames.:palmf: And my case is not unique.
The letter ё has always been marginal in the Russian language and in fact is a recent invention (18th century). Until a few centuries ago there was no need for it in the language but then phonetic rules changed. The written language still refuses to catch up properly.

I think Arina and Alina should be even more confusing especially for Japanese.
The interesting thing is that Arina is a very old russified form of the Greek name Irina. Originally it was Orina due to different phonetic rules of the language at the time. Alyona as a form of Yelena is equally old and its original form was Olena for similar reasons. Both have now become independent names. Meanwhile, Alina is a very recent borrowing from Western European languages. So is Alisa. And Amina is not Russian at all but Arabic and used by Muslim ethnicities. Talk about confusing.
 

vorravorra

Record Breaker
Joined
Apr 9, 2016
When Russia became Orthodox Christian nation, the Slavonic names were for the most part lost, though for many centuries, you still have Slavonic name that meant something to the Russian ear coexisting with the Christian mostly Greek-derived names. So as late as sixteenth century you still have Malyuta rather that Grigori Skuratov (Slavonic ‘private’ name preferred over his official Christian name). The pool of given names became very small and very foreign, so the Russian developed a huge number of diminutives for each popular name that sounded more along the lines of Russian, were shorter or just more pleasing than the Greek and allowed to tell one Yelena from five others.

There are dozens of version of the most popular names like Yelena or Aleksey, from common to unusual. Like all nations, Russians are not immune to fashionable name trends, so sometimes you see lots of Latin names cropping up, sometimes the Slavonic ones come back (most of them have a drawback of sounding too much because they are pretty princely, so there is a risk of ending up with a snooty snivelling brat called WrathfulGlory on your hands), sometimes it is the status quo of the Greek-derived top ten.
The pool of Christian names in use was much bigger when you had to choose among the saints whose day it was on the day of a child's birth or christening. Meaning if you were born or christened on St. Valentine's day your name got to be Valentine (in reality a day commemorates more than one saint so you were not limited to a single name to choose from but several). So most saints had someone named after them and no name predominated. But that custom fell out of favour first among the upper classes (who developed a dislike for a lot of traditional Orthodox names once French became influential) and then in the 20th century among everyone else. Now if 25 percent of the population wants to name their child Alexander there is nothing stopping them. Some old names came back in favour in recent years but only a small proportion of what once was. Russian still has no custom of simply inventing first names or using nicknames as first names, and it's unlikely that last names could ever be used as first names as is popular in America because Russian does not work that way. So the name pool is not broadened through that mechanism.

The main reason for nicknames is not so much the foreignness of names as their cumbersomeness. Zhanna, Alina, Alisa, Diana and Emma are recent borrowings with no nicknames, while names ending in -slav(a) are Slavic but are all shortened to something because they are quite unwieldy. Alexander also hardly rolls off the tongue so no surprise it has a nickname.
 

Draculus

On the Ice
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Sep 8, 2018
In fact, it does not sound like a Russian name to me, but a Ukrainian one ("kolyada" is a Ukrainian noun meaning Christmas celebration).
Actually, it is not from Ukrainian (in russian it has the same meaning) but from Old Church Slavonic 'колѩда'. It has similar meaning in many western and south slavic languages. And originally it is from latin 'саlеndае'.
So yes, it is not not slavic and hence is not russian.
 

lariko

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Country
Canada
The pool of Christian names in use was much bigger when you had to choose among the saints whose day it was on the day of a child's birth or christening. Meaning if you were born or christened on St. Valentine's day your name got to be Valentine (in reality a day commemorates more than one saint so you were not limited to a single name to choose from but several). So most saints had someone named after them and no name predominated. But that custom fell out of favour first among the upper classes (who developed a dislike for a lot of traditional Orthodox names once French became influential) and then in the 20th century among everyone else. Now if 25 percent of the population wants to name their child Alexander there is nothing stopping them. Some old names came back in favour in recent years but only a small proportion of what once was. Russian still has no custom of simply inventing first names or using nicknames as first names, and it's unlikely that last names could ever be used as first names as is popular in America because Russian does not work that way. So the name pool is not broadened through that mechanism.

The main reason for nicknames is not so much the foreignness of names as their cumbersomeness. Zhanna, Alina, Alisa, Diana and Emma are recent borrowings with no nicknames, while names ending in -slav(a) are Slavic but are all shortened to something because they are quite unwieldy. Alexander also hardly rolls off the tongue so no surprise it has a nickname.

Alina occurred historically before the reborrowing, particularly as a form of Alevtina and Akulina & Zhanna occurred for at least a century as far as I can tell. Normally, borrowing looks for names that are simpler and sounds like something similar to a familiar, pre-existing name, by obvious reasons. Traditional names, however, did have meanings and were short, something like Besson or Radost’, no different to any names indigenous to its language.
 

ancientpeas

The Notorious SEW
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I wonder if Russians have the same problem as we do that one name can become incredibly popular for a time and all the people are named "Jennifer" or "Emily" or "Michael" for years and years. (Michael was the number one boys name for more than 40 years apparently. As per Wiki: In the United States, Michael was the most popular name of the 20th century, ranking No. 1 from 1954 to 1998 (with the exception of 1960, when it was second to David). It was among the top three most popular names for each year since 1953, only falling out of the top five in 2011 for the first time since 1949.)

I always wonder in countries where it seems, as an outsider, there are so many people with the same name how you differentiate. Are people called by their last names mostly?

I love Russian names. When I was younger I was completely obsessed with the Romanov Princesses and I really wanted to call my future daughter Anastasia or Tatiana. I loved Natasha too but there is always the Rocky and Bullwinkle problem. Now with Anastasia you have the 50 Shades of Grey problem. As someone who was given a name that at the same time became a popular tv character and had to spend much time telling people I was not a witch and that I'd been named after my Dad and a Grace Kelly character I wouldn't do that to my kid.
 

lariko

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Yes, we are just discussing this. A disproportionately high number of Russian women are called and were called Yelena, Olga, Natalia, Anna, Maria and you have the same with Alexander, Alexei, Anton, Andrey among men.

Obviously, there are ebbs and flows, like the abovementioned short surges in popularity of the princely Slavic names, like Vyacheslav and Svyatogor, but overall, it’s mostly Greek names with a smattering of Nordic like Oleg and Igor’ and a couple of actual Slavic names like Svetlana hanging on.

Russians use patronymic in official documents and huge amounts of unofficial nicknames to tell all their seven Yelenas in the same grade apart.

Both my grandmothers had the same first and patronymic names. I called one by patronymic, the second by a nickname. There was pretty much zero chance I was going to be named anything else. However, one of my nanas called me Lyoshka, which is a common nickname for Aleksei. The very first Aleksei I dated was confused out of his mind.
 

ancientpeas

The Notorious SEW
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Yes, we are just discussing this. A disproportionately high number of Russian women are called and were called Yelena, Olga, Natalia, Maria and you have the same with Alexander, Alexei, Anton, Andrey among men.

Obviously, there are ebbs and flows, like the abovementioned short surges in popularity of the princely Slavic names, like Vyacheslav and Svyatogor, but overall, it’s mostly Greek names with a smattering of Nordic like Oleg and Igor’ and a couple of actual Slavic names like Svetlana hanging on.

Russians use patronymic in official documents and huge amounts of unofficial nicknames to tell all their seven Yelenas in the same grade apart.
Yes.. I forgot about the using of the father's name in your middle name. It's an interesting technique to differentiate people.

I come from the era of the Jennifer. There were sometimes 4 or 5 Jennifers in a classroom. Jen A, Jenny, Jennifer, one went by her middle name and then a Jen M. Girls don't tend to be called their last names like boys sometime are here so that wasn't an option. I never even met someone with my name of my age. There are a lot more girls with my name who are 7-10 years younger than me.
 

vorravorra

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Apr 9, 2016
Alina occurred historically before the reborrowing, particularly as a form of Alevtina and Akulina & Zhanna occurred for at least a century as far as I can tell. Normally, borrowing looks for names that are simpler and sounds like something similar to a familiar, pre-existing name, by obvious reasons. Traditional names, however, did have meanings and were short, something like Besson or Radost’, no different to any names indigenous to its language.
I wish names like Alevtina and Akulina would come back. Once the peasants/merchant class stopped using them they disappeared. At least we had a return of Varvara, Daria, to an extent Anfisa, Taisia. But Aksinia, Pelageya, Glafira, Agafia, Aglaia are also lovely names that are not really used anymore and instead we get a million Anastasias. In my day it was a million Tatianas. Never understood why you would give your child a name about every fifth girl seems to have.

Yes, we are just discussing this. A disproportionately high number of Russian women are called and were called Yelena, Olga, Natalia, Anna, Maria and you have the same with Alexander, Alexei, Anton, Andrey among men.

Obviously, there are ebbs and flows, like the abovementioned short surges in popularity of the princely Slavic names, like Vyacheslav and Svyatogor, but overall, it’s mostly Greek names with a smattering of Nordic like Oleg and Igor’ and a couple of actual Slavic names like Svetlana hanging on.

Russians use patronymic in official documents and huge amounts of unofficial nicknames to tell all their seven Yelenas in the same grade apart.

Both my grandmothers had the same first and patronymic names. I called one by patronymic, the second by a nickname. There was pretty much zero chance I was going to be named anything else. However, one of my nanas called me Lyoshka, which is a common nickname for Aleksei. The very first Aleksei I dated was confused out of his mind.
Svetlana is actually a made-up name introduced as late as the 19th century rather than an genuine old Slavic name. I have not really encountered the use of different nicknames to tell different "Yelenas" apart. All four Tatianas in my class were called Tania, all Yelenas were called Lena, all Annas were called Anya etc.

There are Latin names (including such staples as Natalia, Yulia, Roman, Sergei and Pavel) as well as Greek names, as well as some old Hebrew like Ilya in common Russian usage. But Greek ones obviously predominate due to the origin of the religion.
 

dlco

Rinkside
Joined
Jun 13, 2020
Alina occurred historically before the reborrowing, particularly as a form of Alevtina and Akulina
I don't think Alina was ever a form of Alevtina or Akulina. Those are lower class names, there were no Alinas among peasants. Alina was an arictocratic name borrowed from France.

And not because she'd read him, either,
and not because she'd once preferred
Lovelace, or Grandison, or neither;
but in the old days she had heard
about them -- nineteen to the dozen --
so often from her Moscow cousin
Princess Alina. She was still
engaged then -- but against her will

A.S.Pushkin. Eugene Onegin
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I love Russian names. When I was younger I was completely obsessed with the Romanov Princesses and I really wanted to call my future daughter Anastasia or Tatiana. I loved Natasha too but there is always the Rocky and Bullwinkle problem.

:laugh: For GSers who are not up on their 1960s U.S. children's cartoon shows ;), the Rocky (the flying squirrel) and Bullwinkle (the moose) show featured a cartoon villain named "Boris Bad-enov"-- a spoof on (Tsar) Boris Godenov (pronounced like "good enough"). He had a sidekick, the spy Natasha.

As for me, I was in love with Natasha (Natalya) the character from Tolstoi's War and Peace. :)
 
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