Russian Baby Names

From LoveToKnow Baby

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Mariya, Thank you so much for the great information on this subject! You've certainly educated many of us today!-Susie

One of the most sensible list of Russian names I've seen, a bit short but at least it doesn't list Nikita as a female name, short forms like Tanya or Kolenka as full forms and monster made-up vaguely-slavic-sounding names like Ganoochka.

I can add that short form of Svetlana is usually Sveta, while Lana is more rare and can actually be a full name.

Also, I've never heard of Marik as a short form of Mark, but I've met people of Caucasian (as in Caucasus region, not Caucasian race) whose full name was Marik. They can have names that resemble like Russian short-from names like Garik or Azik, but these aren't typical Russian names. As for Oksana, it is originally a Ukranian name, but very common in Russia, short forms can be Ksyusha ('cause people tend to mix up the two names) or, more often, Ksana.

There are actually very few "Russian" names, most names like Nikolai, Maksim or Mariya are Greek, Roman, Hebrew and whatnot, just changed a bit in writing and pronunciation.

Names like Svetlana and Yaroslav are originally Slavic and thus "more" Russian. I could add Miroslav, Svyatoslav and a couple other -slavs (not derived from "slave", mind you. Languages don't work that way). Names like Snezhana and Vlada are also ancient, of other Slavic orgins, yet are used in Russia. There was a trend of -na names in 70-80's, so we've got quite a few Snezhanas, Karinas, Kristinas and Darinas. Some other common male names I can think of are Andrey (Andryusha), Nikita (yep, it is MALE, no common short form, just variants like Nik, Nikitka), Oleg (Olezhek, Olezhka), Il'ya (usually spelled Ilya or Ilja in English ), Igor (Igoryok, Igoryosha) Yan, Kirill, Denis, Anton (short forms of these like Kiryusha and Deniska are too hob-a-nob, so full forms are used more often). Names like Artur, Ruslan or Bogdan are not Russian originally but are common and accepted. Now, girls... I could add Marina, Nina, Sofiya (Sonya), Alina (Alya), Arina, Zoya, Taisia (Taya), Lyudmila (Lyuda, Mila), then Mila (full name) foreign names like Sabina, Diana, Marianna, Zhanna, and Belarus/Ukranian names like Olesya, Alesya and Lesya (people usually insist these are completely different names but actually they are just variants of the same root that English name Alice belongs to. BTW, we have Alisa as well. Be careful with old-fashioned names like Yevdokia (these are somewhat trendy now, but may appear funny), Paraskeva, Pelageya, Glafira, Fedosja, etc.

Oh, one more thing, about the patronymics. They DO NOT have two possible endings for each gender, just one. The thing is that the ending spelling and pronunciation depend on the dad's name - some go with -ovih, some, with -evich, and a couple with -ich. Mikhail's children would be, let's say, Alexey Mikhailovich and Elena Mikhailovna. Aleksey's kids - Tatiana Alekseyevna and Ilya Alekseyevich. And Il'ya's kids would be Yevgeniy Il'yich (Lenin's name was Vladimir Il'yich) and Tamara Il'yinichna. That last type of patronimic is rare, so basically you go with the first two. OK, I'll stop rambling here. Hope this will be of some help.

Oksana--is ukraine name not russian and its short form will be not Ksyusha because its Ksenyas short form. I dont know the short form of Oksana but its definetly NOT Ksyusha )

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