Eastern Slavic Naming Customs - Family Name (surname)

Family Name (surname)

Family names, like Путин (Putin), Ельцин (Yel'tsin) or Горбачёв (Gorbachyov), generally function in the same manner that English family names do. They are generally inherited from one's parents. On marriage, women usually adopt the surname of their husband (as with English names), or (very rarely) vice versa; both choices are voluntary. Another uncommon practice for married women is creating a double surname (for example, Mr. Ivanov and Miss Petrova in their marriage may take family names Ivanov-Petrov and Ivanova-Petrova, respectively).

Grammatically, most Russian surnames are possessive adjectives; the surname-nouns (Lebed' - literally "the swan") or attributive adjectives (Tolstoy - literally "fat" in an archaic form) are infrequent, and they are mainly adopted from other languages. The surnames ending in -ov, -ev, -in are short forms of possessive adjectives, the ones ending in -sky are full forms.

The ending -enko is of Ukrainian origin, and used in both genders. The Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko is an example.

As with all Slavic adjectives, family names have different forms depending on gender — for example, the wife of Борис Ельцин (Boris Yel'tsin) is Наина Ельцина (Naina Yel'tsina). Note that this change of grammatical gender is not considered to be changing the name received from a woman's father or husband (compare the equivalent rule in Czech or Polish). The correct transliteration of such feminine names in English is debated: sometimes women's names are given in their original form, sometimes in the masculine form (technically incorrect but now more widely recognized).

Russian surnames usually end in -ov (-ova for female); -ev (-eva); -in (-ina). Ukrainian surnames generally end with -enko, -ko, -uk, and -ych (these endings do not change based on gender). The ending -skiy or -sky (-skaya) is common in both Russia and Ukraine.

The majority of Russian surnames are produced from personal names (Sergeyev — Sergey's son; Vasilyev — Vasiliy's son; etc.). Many surnames originate from names of animals and birds (Lebedev — the possessive adjective from лебедь, "swan"; Korovin — the possessive adjective from корова, "cow"; etc.), which have long ago been used as additional personal names or nicknames. Many other surnames have their origin in people's professions and crafts (Kuznetsov — Smith's son). In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -off was a common transliteration of -ov when spelling Russian surnames in foreign languages such as French (e.g., the Smirnoff brand).