It’s All In a Name – Rest of Eastern Europe

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In Eastern European countries, it is much more common than in Western European countries for children to have the same first name as the parent of the same gender.

In the Slavonic countries of Central and Eastern European, such as Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as in Western Europe a great many names have a Christian origin. Indeed, in Russia, the Orthodox Church forbade the use of Slavonic names and insisted on names that had been borne by saints of the Eastern Church. In such countries, each day of the year in the calendar is allocated to a particular saint and many people take their first name after one of these saints. In fact, in such countries, celebration of one’s saint day is often an occasion of more significance than celebration of one’s birthday.

Besides the names of saints, many Slavonic names derive from terms of endearment or affection. Take, as an example, first names in Serbia. The word ‘drag’ meaning ‘dear’ gives rise to Dragan, Predrag, Dragana, Dragoslav, Dragoslava. The terms ‘mio’ (masculine) and ‘mila’ (feminine) meaning ‘darling’ give rise to Milijana, Milija, Milan, Milana, Milorad, Radmila. The term ‘ljuba’ meaning ‘love’ gives rise to Ljuba, Ljubica. The term ‘nad’ meaning ‘hope’ gives rise to Nadezda, Nadica. The term ‘radost’ meaning brightness gives rise to Radmilo, Radoslav, Radoslava, Rade.

In these countries, the standard form of the first name is usually only used in a formal context because every first name has at least one diminutive and family, friends and colleagues will invariably use one of these diminutives. In Russia especially, there is a very large number of pet names of first names, many of them differing markedly from the base form – consider Dunya and Dunyasha from Avdotya or Sasha and Sashura from Aleksandr. There are more than twenty forms of Maria in Russian. The full form – Mariya – is used in official papers, in formal relationships and with unfamiliar people. The shortened form Masha is neutral and used in relationships with friends, while there is a form of affection Mashenka and intimate, tender forms such as Mashunechka, Mashunya and Marusya. The unceremonious/vulgar form – Mashka – is quite impolite but acceptable within the family or between children or adult friends.

In the Slavonic countries, a woman’s first name usually ends with the letter ‘a’ and a woman’s surname always ends with ‘-ova’, so that a person’s gender is always absolutely clear from the full name (which is not always the case with English names such as Leslie Thomas or Pat Fisher). Surnames of Slavonic nations can be roughly divided into three main groups: those derived from original nicknames, such as names of animals, trees, things, professions; those derived from the Christian name or profession of the father (patronymics); and those derived from names of towns, villages, regions (toponymics).

The naming practice in Poland is similar to that in other Slavonic countries and, since Poland is so Catholic, the use of saints’ names for first names is extremely common. Polish royal names are popular too – Kazimierz, Mieczysław, Władysław, Zygmunt. All except the last of these royal names are dithematic Slavonic names, that is made up of two vocabulary words. For instance, Kazimierz comes from ‘kazić’ (to destroy) and ‘meri’ (famous). Many Polish family names end in ‘-ski’, ‘-cki’, ‘-orocki’, ‘-owicz’, ‘-yk’ or ‘-iak’ all which mean ‘son of’.

Links:
Common Polish first names click here
Common Polish last names click here

In Kosovo, common sources of first names are deceased and loved relatives, historic heroes, and terms from nature. One interesting particularity occurs when a family keeps having daughters and really wants a son. The family may name the latest girl Shkurtesa which means ‘short’ in the hope that this will stop the line of females. In Kosovo, as well as a surname, people have a clan name (there are around ten main clans). So, for example, my Kosovan friend Astrit Maliqi also uses the clan name Gashi.

Two Eastern European countries stand out from the others in terms of the form and structure of names.

Romania has first names that are quite similar to Italy and Spain because Romanian is a Romance language not a Slavonic one.

Hungary has totally different looking names from the rest of Europe because Hungarian is not an Indo-European language but one distantly related to Finnish. Therefore, even when the name has a Latin, German or Slavonic origin, it has a very different form from the original – consider István from the Latin Stephanus, Imre from the German Heinrich, and László from the Slavonic Vladislav. As in other Eastern European countries, every given name has several affectionate versions – consider Erzsébet (Elizabeth) which can be rendered as Erzsi, Bözsi, Erzsike or Bözsike. As in China and Japan, in Hungary in any official context, the family name is always placed before the given name – a practice unique in Europe. The most common surname in Hungary is Nagy (which means ‘large’).

Link: Hungarian first names click here

In Ukraine – like most of the countries of Europe – names have been greatly influenced by Christianity but, since the acceptance of Greek Orthodoxy as the state religion at the end of the 10th century, many Greek names have entered the local language to be added to genuine Slavic names. Since Ukraine and Russia are linguistic and geographic neighbours, they often have similar names with only one letter differing them when written – such as Dmitro (Ukrainian) and Dmitri (Russuan).

In Russia, naming practices have been very influenced by political developments. Until the October revolution of 1917, Russian names were limited to those sanctioned by the Orthodox Church. After the revolution, the communists encouraged parents to give their children names reflecting the new political order – sometimes with quite startling results. Examples include Mels (an acronym of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin), Rem (an acronym for revolution, Engels and Marx) and Vladlen (from Vladimir Lenin) plus – more prosaically – Traktor (‘tractor’) and Elektrifikatsiya (‘electrification’). Since the 1980s, Russian nationalist and Orthodox religous feelings have been revived and many parents are choosing traditional Church-sanctioned names, especially older ones not commonly heard for a century. Some of the most popular boy’s names now are Nikita (‘to be victorious’), Daniil (‘divine judge’), and Grigori (‘alert’), while popular girls’ names include Darya or Dasha (‘owning’), Anastasia (‘resurrection’) and Ksenya (‘guest’).

Link: Russian first names click here

In Russia, everyone has a second name which is a patronymic, that is a reference to the name of one’s father. For a man, this takes the form of the suffix ‘-ovich’, so someone whose father is called Ivan would have the second name Ivanovich. For a woman, it takes the form of the suffix ‘-ovna’, so someone whose father is called Vladimir would have the second name Vladimirovna. When addressing someone politely in Russia, one would use the first name and the patronymic which is the equivalent to saying ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ in English.

The most common surname in Russia is Ivanov.

In Latvia, there is a trend to give names to children after many popular television soap operas, both Mexican and American, so you could meet Ridžs (Ridge), Rebeka (Rebecca), Džons (John), Džulija (Julie, Julia). However, these names with letter ‘J’ in English, which is written Dž in Latvian, sound very strange and awkward together with Latvian surnames such as Kocinš (‘a little tree’) or Berzinš (‘a little birch tree’). In Latvian, first names tend to have gender-specific endings, for example, men’s names end with ‘s’ in most cases and sometimes in ‘o'(if this word has originated from other country), while all women’s names end with ‘a’ or ‘e’. Since the Second World War, all last names for women have ended with ‘a’ or ‘e’. So the female version of Kalns would be Kalna, while the femalwe version of Bondars wwould be Bondare. Latvian law even requires a woman to have last letter added in case of foreign last names such as through marriage.