East Slavic Names

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WARNING: Do not cite this page as a reference. This page is on this wiki to make the content "searchable" and easier to find. If you find the information you seek here, go to the original sources to verify the information and use them for your documentation.

Sources:

Academy of St. Gabriel "Medieval Names Archive" - http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/
Database of medieval names (from the Medieval Names Archive) - http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/database/
Archive of St. Gabriel reports - http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/archive.cgi

Laurel Name Articles - http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/names/

IGI Searches, batches beginning with C, J, K, M (except M17 and M18), or P are acceptable - https://familysearch.org/search/collection/igi

Omniglot On-line Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages - http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm

Russian

Wickenden, Paul. Dictionary of Period Russian Names, 3rd edition hardcopy only (available at the SCA Marketplace), and on-line 2nd edition available at https://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/
Wickenden, Paul. Russian Archive - articles on specific types of bynames (occupational, botanical, zoological, etc.) a few of which are not included in his Dictionary of Period Russian Names.

Sreznevskiy, Izmail. Словарь Древнерусского Языка (Slovar Drevnerusskogo Iazyka) - Materials for a Dictionary of Ancient Russian Language from Literary Sources, has examples of period words with dated examples, although one must contend with the Old Russian alphabet. PDFs can be found on-line.

Словарь русского языка XI–XVII Вв. - Dictionary of Russian Language XI-XVII cent.

Pre-Reform Russian Orthography Cheat Sheet

Ukrainian

The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/pages/U/K/Ukrainianlanguage.htm

Chuchka, Pavlo. Prizvishcha Zakarpats'kikh Ukraintsiv Istoriko-Etimologichnij Slovnik. Lviv, 2005 - https://archive.org/details/imena_ukrayinciv/page/n271/mode/2up

Yar Slavutych. 1962. "Ukrainian Surnames in -enko" Names: A Journal of Onomastics 10(3): 181-186. https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1962.10.3.181

Paul Wickenden, Dictionary of Period Russian Names, 3rd Edition - has a discussion of “Russian Feminine Names on the Western Borderlands” in Appendix A based on the Akty istoricheskie, Vol XIV: Inventari imenii XVI-go stoletiia. In the body of the Dictionary, names from this West Russian source are marked as [Inv] and provide us with 16th century Ukrainian and Belarussian names. The 3rd edition is hardcopy only available from the SCA Marketplace.

Early 17th Century Names from Zhytomyr, Ukraine: http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ffride/zhytomyrpatt.html

A Brief Foray into Ukrainian Names: http://sofyalarus.info/Russia/ukrainian.html

SENA Appendix A: Patterns That Do Not Need Further Documentation...

http://heraldry.sca.org/sena.html#AppendixA (as of 12 October 2013)

East Slavic:

All patterns found in Paul Wickenden of Thanet's "A Dictionary of Period Russian Names" (http://heraldry.sca.org/paul/) and "Locative Bynames in Medieval Russia" (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/toprus.html) are registerable.

Double Given Names Locative Patronymic Other relationship Descriptive/Occupational Dictus Double Bynames Order
Russian Yes; one Christian, one Slavic Adjectival, rarely other forms Marked (see notes) Matronymics, wife Yes Yes; multiple patronymics (or patronymic from father's whole name) (see notes)
Other (see notes)

Notes:

Russian: The construction of Russian bynames is complicated; see Paul Wickenden of Thanet's "A Dictionary of Period Russian Names" (http://heraldry.sca.org/paul/) for structures both of individual bynames and for names as a whole. His and "Locative Bynames in Medieval Russia" (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/toprus.html) is also useful for constructing locative bynames.

Other East Slavic languages, like Ukranian and Belorussian, follow similar patterns to Russian; they must generally be documented individually.

SENA Appendix C: Regional Naming Groups and Their Mixes

http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/sena.html#AppendixC

Regional Groups: By Time Period: Languages Included In This Group: Can Be Combined With Groups:
East Slavic 550-1100 Russian, Ukrainian, etc. Baltic,

North Slavic, Scandinavian (per May 2013 Cover Letter), South Slavic

1100-1600 Russian, Ruthenian (per May 2021 CL), Ukrainian, etc. Baltic,

Mongol (per September 2012 Cover Letter), North Slavic, Scandinavian (per August 2014 cover Letter), South Slavic

Precedents:

Precedents of the SCA College of Arms - http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/precedents.html
Morsulus Heralds Website - http://www.morsulus.org/ (to search the LoARs and Precedents)
Use the above links to be sure any precedents listed below haven't been superseded by newer precedents.

Collected Name Precedents: Russian - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/Russian.html

Collected Name Precedents: Ukrainian - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/Ukranian.html

July 2017 - Wickenden, "authentic" Russian, and saint's names

From Pelican: On Using Wickenden's A Dictionary of Period Russian Names (aka the Russian Names Database)

http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2017/07/17-07cl.html#3 Both in its electronic second edition and in its hard copy third edition, Paul Wickenden of Thanet's A Dictionary of Period Russian Names is the major source on Russian names available to SCA heralds and submitters. Unfortunately, the work is not without its flaws, which have become more apparent as time has passed. Although some of the flaws were discussed in the June 2013 Cover Letter, issues have been raised often enough in recent months that we wish to provide two important guidelines for how to use this work.

First, heralds and submitters must keep in mind that the Dictionary gives only the earliest dated instance of a particular name under the heading for that name. For example, although the male given name Nikita was used throughout the SCA's period, under the heading for Nikita, the Dictionary provides only a single example, dated to "before 1147." It is only by searching the Dictionary in its entirety that one finds later-dated examples of Nikita under different headings. Because only the earliest date is given for most names, we generally give submitters the benefit of the doubt that name elements found in the Dictionary are temporally compatible.

In the case of name elements in the Dictionary derived from the names of saints and martyrs, we continue to apply the rule set out in the June 2013 Cover Letter. For names listed with only a very early date (3rd century, for example) and noted to be the name of a saint or martyr, the submitter can rely on the Saint's Name Allowance found in PN1B2d1 to register that element.

Second, Wickenden included far more than just period Russian names in the Dictionary. In addition to Russian names, the Dictionary includes name elements from Lithuanian prince and princesses, Bulgarian kings, Czechs, Finns, and people of the Caucasus region including Georgians, sometimes without clearly indicating their origins. This wide range can be problematic for submitters seeking authentic Russian names.

In particular, Wickenden relied on a book by Mikhail Iakolevich Moroshkin called Slavianskii imenoslov ili, sobranie slavianskikh lichnykh imen (The Slavic Name Book, or a Collection of Slavic Personal Names) that is today in the public domain and freely available online (https://archive.org/details/slavianskimenos00morogoog). Name elements from this source are marked in the Dictionary with the abbreviation [Mor]. Moroshkin was interested primarily in common name elements that appeared across the Slavic languages and, as a result, he grouped name elements together under a "Russified" spelling even if they were found in Latin-language records from Bohemia or German-language records from Poland. Thus, a name element taken from Moroshkin and appearing in the Dictionary may not actually be a Russian element.

Despite these flaws, the Dictionary remains the best generally available source for Russian names and one easily accessible to submitters. Therefore, where the submitter has not requested authenticity, names found in the Dictionary will be treated as Russian, regardless of their source. In addition, we will continue the policy of giving submitters the benefit of the doubt as to temporal compatibility when using name elements found in the Dictionary.

Submitters and heralds attempting to construct authentic Russian names are advised to use the Dictionary with caution. Entries sourced solely from Moroshkin should be avoided because it is likely that they are not truly Russian forms. Name elements that use the letters c or h without a c, k, s or z before it probably were not originally written in Cyrillic. Likewise, names containing the letters j, v or w likely were not originally written in Cyrillic and may not be authentic Russian forms.

We encourage anyone who might be interested in writing an Errata to the Dictionary or writing other Russian/Slavic name articles to contact us for guidance or assistance.

http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2017/07/17-07cl.html#3

June 2013 - Russian Resources:

From Pelican: Some Names Resources (An Ongoing Series) As I start my fourth year writing this series, I want to return to a discussion of the naming resources and issues for specific cultures. I've had a particular request to talk about Eastern European languages, as our resources for them are a little skimpier than for Western Europe.

Russian is the Eastern European language for which we have the most information, and we'll sometimes depend on that information to make sense out of other areas. But it's got a lot of interesting features itself.

The main source for Russian name elements and the grammar that glues them together is Paul Wickenden of Thanet's A Dictionary of Period Russian Names, whose second edition is online (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/) and third edition is available through the SCA Marketplace/Stock Clerk. This source uses a single transliteration system, the Library of Congress system, which is only one of the systems we allow. On the whole, this is a fantastic source. It has one serious weakness for our purposes; it only lists the earliest occurrence of any name. So, for example, Ivan is dated to 1181 in the entry for it, though Ivan was common through 1600 and later. This is particularly frustrating for saint's names, which are often listed with only a very early (3rd century, for example) citation, and must depend on the saint's name allowance for registerability.

The most common pattern for Russian names is a given name followed by a patronymic byname, a byname which describes you as your father's child. Patronymics normally are marked, which is to say that they change the father's name to say that it's a patronymic form. The rules are easy; they're based on how the father's name ends. The forms we're used to hearing today, which end in -vich, are pretty uncommon in period. More common are forms like Mikhailov or Vasil'ev; some names even end in -in for this patronymic form, like Borodin. Sometimes syn "son" was added either to the patronymic form of the father's name or to the unaltered form. For women, the grammar is just a hair different: the patronym must be feminized by adding -a to the end: Mikhailova, Vasil'eva, Borodina. They may be marked using doch' "daughter" (yes, the ' is a letter in Russian). The modern -ovna ending is only found a few times in the early 17th century.

Women are also frequently identified as their husband's wife, using zhena "wife" or again with only the modified form of her husband's name. They are even sometimes identified as someone's mother, with the relationship word mat' in place of doch' or zhena. Back to men (though these patterns are registerable for women as well): Sometimes, two generations of patronymics (father and grandfather are included) and rarely names go back even further. Unmarked patronymics in Russian are rare but registerable; several citations that are most likely unmarked patronymic bynames in Russian can be found in the September 2007 Cover Letter. These unmarked patronymic bynames seem to be more frequently found in the Ukraine or Belarus rather than in Russia itself. A few other bynames of relationship (including matronymics, which name a man as his mother's son) are found for men; see the grammar section of the Dictionary (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/zgrammar.html) for more details.

Other kinds of bynames are found less frequently. Descriptive bynames are described in the grammar section of Paul's Dictionary (the URL is given above). Paul has also written articles on certain kinds of descriptive bynames (occupational, animal-based, and plant-based); they are housed at his personal website (http://www.goldschp.net/archive/archive.html).

Locative bynames are discussed at length in his "Locative Bynames in Medieval Russia" (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/toprus.html). Unlike locative bynames in English, these names are at best rarely formed as a prepositional phrase (z Belina "of Belino"). Instead, they take noun or adjectival forms: Novgorodets "resident of Novgorod", Novgorodov "son of Novgorod", or Rostovskoi "the person from Rostov".

If all that's not enough, we have more good research that expands our collection of names (and name spellings) further: Predislava Vydrina, "Russian Personal Names: Name Frequency in the Novgorod Birch-Bark Letters" (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/predslava/bbl/) and with late period data on name frequency, Marya Kargashina, "Names from Muscovite Judgment Charters; Diminutives as Documentary Forms and Name Frequency in Justice in Medieval Russia" (http://heraldry.sca.org/kwhss/2013/Marya_Kargashina/muscovite_namesrev.htm). [[1]]


May 2013 - Old Norse with Russian:

From Pelican: New Lingual Mix for Appendix C When Appendix C of SENA was put in place, we tried to allow for the mixing of Old Norse (here enacted as "Scandinavian languages before 1100") with the various locations that had substantial permanent Viking settlement. This month, we have added another area that had that level of contact with Old Norse speakers: Russia. Vikings were important settlers in Russia; even the name Russia is derived from Rus, the name for early Scandinavian settlers. Orle observes that dozens of Viking (here identified using another cultural term, Varangian) graves, including large numbers of women's graves, are found in Russia. As such, we are adding the mix of Russian/East Slavic with Scandinavian for 550-1100. [[2]]

Sept 2012 - Appx C Typoes:

From Palimpsest and Pelican: Mismatches in Appendix C - http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2012/09/12-09cl.html#3 A couple enterprising heralds pointed out to me that there were further mismatches in Appendix C of SENA beyond the two repaired in the June 2012 Cover Letter. After consultation with Pelican, it is clear that in all cases of mismatch, they should be resolved by making them compatible in both directions. Appendix C has been updated to resolve all the mismatches. For reference, the updates are as follows (all are listed by Regional Group name): Hungarian/Romanian is added as compatible to German and South Slavic for both 550-1100 and 1100-1600; Mongol is added as compatible to Arabic, Hungarian/Romanian, Russian/East Slavic, and Turkish for 1100-1600; Persian is added as compatible to Arabic and Turkish for 1100-1600; and Turkish is added as compatible to Italian for 1100-1600. Please note that these compatibilities were already listed in Appendix C in the other direction; their omission was an oversight uncaught in proofreading. http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2012/09/12-09cl.html

Apr 2010 - feminizing masculine names:

Seraphinowa Maslowska. Name and device. Gules, a Latin cross clechy Or, overall a rose argent barbed and seeded proper. Submitted as Seraphina Maslowska, insufficient evidence was found to support Seraphina as a Polish feminine given name in period... The commenters found that Serafina is a plausible Russian feminine given name in our period based on a documented pattern of forming Russian feminine forms from Russian masculine names by adding -a to the end of the masculine name, combined with the name Serafin Pietryzkowski dated to 1560 in Paul Wickenden's Dictionary of Period Russian Names (3rd ed.) s.n. Serafin... http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2010/04/10-04lar.html

Feb 2010 - unmarked patronymics:

Khristian Pykh. Name and device. Quarterly vert and sable, two spears in saltire argent. This name uses an unmarked patronymic byname in Russian, which is a step from period practice. http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2010/02/10-02lar.html

Sept 2007 - unmarked patronymics (overturn of previous ban):

From Pelican: Unmarked Patronymics in Russian Names The submission of the name Mariia Kotok, registered on this month's LoAR, raised the question of whether unmarked patronymics were used in Russian names. Precedent set in October 2002 forbids the registration of unmarked patronymics in Russian names: Bola is a Russian masculine given name. Lacking evidence that Russian used unmarked patronymic bynames, we have changed this to the patronymic form Bolin in order to register this name. [Gorm Bolin, 10/2002, A-Middle]

An informal letter from Paul Wickenden of Thanet accompanied the submission and argued that the name used to document Kotok (Kulik Kotok) does, in fact, show an unmarked patronymic, and that unmarked patronymics can be found in Russian manuscripts. However, no examples beyond the one cited were provided in this letter, and this example is problematic because it is possible that the byname, which derives from name meaning "cat", can be interpreted as a descriptive byname. We charged the College with finding additional evidence of unmarked patronymics in Russian. Sufficient evidence was found to suggest that unmarked patronymics are an extremely rare, but occasionally found pattern in Russian names.

First is the attestation of experts in Russian names for such a pattern. Paul Wickenden's statement is noted above. In addition, Unbegaun, Russian Surnames, p 2, notes "The use of a non-modified individual name as surname is quite exceptional", and on p 33, "In most cases such names are of Ukrainian or White Russian origin." This statement suggests a known, but extremely rare practice. While it does not explicitly date this practice to our period, in combination with Wickenden's statement, it is strongly suggestive.

However, proof by assertion, even by respected experts is insufficient without actual examples of a naming pattern. So, what did the commenters find? Fause Lozenge provided several possible examples: They [unmarked patronyms] were definitely used in the East Slavic-speaking world: Unbegaun (274) has a few Ukrainian examples, and in the preceding few pages he has many examples of Ukrainian asyndetic patronymics from diminutives. He also has (307-8) some examples of Belarusian asyndetic patronymics.

Paul's dictionary has quite a few names that could be examples. For the masc. name <Spara>, for instance, the citation is <Ivan Spara> 1563. Here are some others, in each case listed under the second element as a masc. name:

  • Fedor Spiachei 1524
  • Andrei Spudinka 1560
  • Senka Steban 1495
  • Fedot Striapko 1462
  • Ivan Struga 1579
  • Vasiuk Sused 1500
  • Fedor Akhmyl 1332
  • Mikifor Aksak ~1495
  • Ivan Baba 1424
  • Shvarn Boldyzh' 1151

How many are actually patronymic is another question; some might be descriptive epithets that Paul (or his sources) didn't recognize as such, and I suppose that we might even have some double forenames here." This list supports the statement by the experts that unmarked patronymics are found but are rare. Given this, we feel that it is reasonable to allow the registration of unmarked patronymics in Russian names. However, it should be noted that this practice is rare at best, and should be discouraged.

http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2007/09/07-09cl.html


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