Comparison Between Slavic and Other Names
In the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, non-Slavic patronymics and family names may also be changed according to the above-mentioned rules. This is widespread in naming people of ethnic minorities and citizens of Central Asian or Caucasian republics of the former Soviet Union, especially if a person is a permanent resident and speaks the local language. For example, Irina Hakamada, a popular Russian politician whose father was Japanese, has a patronymic "Mutsuovna" (strange-sounding in Russian) since her father's first name was Mutsuo.
Bruno Pontecorvo, after he emigrated to the USSR, was known as Бруно Максимович Понтекорво (Bruno Maksimovich Pontekorvo) in the Russian scientific community, because his father's given name was Massimo (corresponding to Russian Максим (Maksim)). Pontecorvo's sons have been known by names Джиль Брунович Понтекорво, Антонио Брунович Понтекорво and Тито Брунович Понтекорво (Dzhil/Gil Brunovich, Antonio Brunovich, Tito Brunovich Pontekorvo).
In several Tom Clancy novels, Sergei Nicolayevich Golovko calls his American counterpart, John Patrick Ryan, "Ivan Emmetovich," because his father was Emmet Ryan: as an Irish-American, Ryan had not had a patronymic before.
Such conversion of foreign names is unofficial and optional in many cases of communication and translation.
Doubled first names (to a French style) are a very rare foreign-influenced instance. Russian filmmaker Valeriya Gai Germanika was registered at birth as just Valeriya by Soviet authorities but legally demanded her first name to be changed to Valeriya Gai upon reaching adulthood in the new Russia (contrary to the popular that this is her pseudonim).
Read more about this topic: Eastern Slavic Naming Customs
Famous quotes containing the words comparison and/or names:
“Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)