Early Soviet Union
During the days of revolutionary enthusiasm, as part of the campaign to get rid of "bourgeois culture" (and, specifically, of religious heritage, manifest in many Russian first names), there was a drive to invent new, "revolutionary" names. This produced a large number of Soviet people with bizarre names. Commonly the source were initialisms, as "Vil", "Vilen(a)", "Vladlen(a)" and "Vladilen(a)" for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. A common suffix was -or, after the October Revolution as seen in "Vilor(a)" or "Melor(a)" (Marx Engels Lenin). Sometimes children were given names after aspects as Barrikada ("barricade") or Revolutsiya ("revolution"). Some of these names have survived into the 21st century.
This tendency was referenced in Polar Star, the second book of the Arkady Renko series by Martin Cruz Smith. The character Dynama (from dynamo) was so named by her father to celebrate the 1950s electrification of her native Uzbekistan. By the 1980s, however, this name was colloquially used refer to opportunistic women who cultivated serial lovers for financial gain - a practice utterly alien to the faithfully married and traditionally-minded Dynama of the novel.
A number of books about this tendency mention some other unusual names such as Dazdrapertrak for Da Zdravstvuet Pervy Traktor ('Hail The First Tractor!'), Dazdraperma Da Zdravstvuet Pervoe Maya ('Hail May Day!') (May Day - International Workers' Day), Revmir(a), for Revolutsiya Mirovaya ('World Revolution') and Oyushminald, for Otto Yulyevich Shmidt na Ldine" (Otto Schmidt on the ice floe').
Some parents called their children the German female names "Gertrud(a)" (Gertrude), reanalyzing it as "Geroy/Geroinya Truda" ('Hero of Labour'), "Marlen(a)" (Marlene), reanalyzing it as "Marx and Lenin", or "Sten" (Stan), reanalyzing it as "Stalin and Engels".
A number of Russians with the name "Kim", were not of Korean descent, but rather were named after the "Kommunistichesky International Molodyozhi" ('Youth Communist International').
Read more about this topic: Eastern Slavic Naming Customs
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, early, soviet and/or union:
“Nothing an interested foreigner may have to say about the Soviet Union today can compare with the scorn and fury of those who inhabit the ruin of a dream.”
—Christopher Hope (b. 1944)
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The tremendous outflow of intellectuals that formed such a prominent part of the general exodus from Soviet Russia in the first years of the Bolshevist Revolution seems today like the wanderings of some mythical tribe whose bird-signs and moon-signs I now retrieve from the desert dust.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)