What do Slavic Last Names Mean?
In Japanese people often have names related to location. Murayama is Mura plus Yama, village plus mountain.
Tanaka-Looks like "In the Rice Field"
Mori=Forest.
Since the characters often look like what's being described, it's a great visual reminder of the name when seen with Chinese characters.
First names are a bear, though. Just the last names are easy.
In German, French, and English, the last names are sometimes related to profession-Kaufmann, for example. What about Slavic last names?
Same in Slavic languages.
It varies, but in Czech most of them are descriptive terms, some of the most common names in the Czech Republic mean the following:
Novak - Newman
Svoboda - Freeman
Novotny - Newman again basically
Cerny - Black
Nemec - German
Polak - Pole
Cech - Czech
Sokol - Falcon
Skoda - pitiful
Nedved - Bear
Kovar - Blacksmith
Dvorak - owner of a courtyard
Horak - highlander, from the moutains
Vesely - funny
There are also numerous German surnames in the Czech Republic
Thanks, JPT. I found a site for some Slavic names, but not all countries. I don't know any Czech, but I like Slavic languages, so I see some things and names I recognize. Nedved is really interesting-especially since it starts with "n", not "m" like in Ukrainian and Russian. I did not know that Dvorak meant that-also informative.
Interesting stuff.
Russian surnames are usually the same, usually they are in Genitive case showing the belonging of something to something, or they can be adjectives made of nouns, verbs etc.
the most widespread Russian surname according to the Census is
-smirnov(a) - meaning son or daughter of a quiet person.
Putin - means someone belonging to the way/road, someone who goes along the way.
Stalin means a man made of steel
Tolstoy is an old Russian adjective for "fat".
Thank-you. I didn't realize that about Putin, but it makes sense because of the "put" part which has something to do with travel-like Sputnik. Stalin reminds me of "Stahl"; I just learned the meaning of "Tolstoy" yesterday-interesting.
Your post helped me to figure something out, so thanks again.
K.T. you are right. sPUTnik and PUTin are related words. Moreover this is a common Indo-European root.
In English it's PATH, so Putin can be translated as "Paths" probably.
Path, hmmm. That's interesting. I wonder if there is a dictionary of IE roots. I'll have to look for that. Thanks for the idea.
what does the endings -ic´ means in Croatian and Slovenian? Do those endings occur in some other Slavonic languages or only in those two?
<<what does the endings -ic´ means in Croatian and Slovenian? Do those endings occur in some other Slavonic languages or only in those two? >>
Russian has it also but it's included in the patronymic rather than the surname.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin = Vladimir, son of Vladimir, Putin
Dmitry Anatolevich Medvedev = Dmitry, son of Anatoly, Medvedev
What do Russians do when they move to another country? How do they work the female/male surname changing?
For example, a husband and wife Dmitry Petrov and Anna Petrova???
Does Anna Petrova write her name in official documents as Anna Petrov, or does she still write it as Anna Petrova even though it then differs from the husband's surname?
I used to live in an area where it wasn't uncommon for people to have "ik" as part of their last name. Is that Polish? A patronymic used as a last name? They weren't Russian.