[Note: this article originally published in Johnson's Russia List, May 5, 2008
The Onomastics
of the Russian Leaders
(In Honor of
the New “Bear President”)
We can learn a lot about Russian
realities by taking a look at Russian last names. My information for this
article comes, largely, from the wonderful book by Boris Unbegaun, Russian
Surnames (Oxford University Press, 1972). All page citations below are from
the Russian translation, Russkie familii, edited by B.A. Uspenskij and
translated by L.V. Kurkina, V.P. Neroznak, and E. R. Skvajrs [Squires?]
(Moscow: Progress Publications, 1989).
Surnames came late in human history
to the world at large. They did not exist before the fifteenth or sixteenth
century. Russia
is no exception. In fact the very word for “surname” in Russian, familija, was borrowed from the West only
in the seventeenth century, and a lot of Russian peasants did not have surnames
right up to the day of the emancipation of serfs in 1861.[i] As you
would expect, the upper aristocracy was the first social class to adopt surnames.
They were based, for the most part on toponyms (place names). In other words, a
prince whose domain encompassed the Vjaz’ma area became Prince Vjazemskij (most
of these earliest surnames have adjectival type endings in -skij or –skoj).
Among other names in this category are Obolenskij, Volkonskij, Trubetskoj,
Meshcherskij, Kurbskij (Unbegaun intro, p. 20). To this very day Russians
recognize these names as indicative of the origins of a person at the highest
levels of the aristocracy in pre-Soviet Russia . It is noteworthy that two
members of the Decembrists, who, in 1825, mounted an unsuccessful attempt to
overthrow the government and introduce liberal reforms inspired by the West,
were Prince Evgenij Obolenskij and Prince S.P. Trubetskoj.
As is common throughout much of the
world, Russian surnames were derived, in large part, from (1) patronymics
(father names, as Johnson or Jackson in English, formed by adding an
ending to a given [baptismal] name) (2) names of professions or trades ( Smith, Cooper or Baker in English) (3) toponyms (see above) or (4) nicknames.
Although this does not always work, there is a kind of rough class gradation
involved. At the highest level (a very small category) are the aristocrats with
the princely –skij/skoj names just mentioned (there is another large category
of –skij/skoj names that are not of princely derivation—they are primarily of
non-Russian origin: Polish, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Jewish). Next come those
whose names are derived by using the patronymic suffixes (-ov, -ev, or the
slightly less common –in). These names make up the most widespread category to
the present day. After that come the less prestigious, lower-class names that originate
in trades or nicknames. Over the course of centuries, however, these two latter
categories also have frequently adopted the standard patronymic endings. For
example, Tkach (‘weaver’) or Rybak (‘fisherman’) became Tkachev and Rybakov, and Medved’
(‘bear,’ nickname for a clumsy, burly type) became Medvedev (the name that Hillary Clinton recently had trouble
pronouncing).
Now we can take a look at the
surnames of some of the most important Russian political leaders of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, establish their derivation, and see if
any conclusions are apparent.
(1)
Lenin.
According to Unbegaun (p. 83-4), this name falls into the category of “surnames
formed from given (baptismal) names.” The relevant name here is Aleksandr, from which come, among others,
the surnames Aleksandrov, Alenin, and
Lenin. But in the case of the man once known as “The Great Ilich,” none of
this information is relevant, since for him Lenin
is a nom de guerre; Lenin’s real name was Ul’janov (‘Julianson’), which fits into the common category of
patronymic names (“surnames derived from baptismal names”—p. 45). As for Lenin, apparently inspired by classical
writers who named their characters after rivers (Pushkin’s Onegin and Lermontov’s Pechorin),
he named himself after the Lena River in Siberia .[ii] The
name Ilich, is not a surname, so we
will not get into that here.
(2)
Stalin. Here we have another nom de guerre,
meaning “Man of Steel.” His real surname, Dzhugashvili, was a Georgian name of
Ossetian provenance. It came from the word dzhukha,
meaning ‘garbage,’ ‘offal,’ or ‘dregs’ (p. 186): ‘Man of Offal’ or ‘Offalman.’
(3)
Khrushchev (‘Maybeetleman’) is derived from
the name of an insect, the May beetle, or khrushch
(p. 24). It fits into the category “surnames derived from nicknames,” in a subcategory
including animal names and still another subcategory, “surnames derived from
names of insects.” Two very common surnames from this subcategory (p. 151) are Zhukov (‘Beetleman’) and Komarov (‘Mosquitoman’). We may pause
here to wonder what one of Premier Khrushchev’s ancestors did to deserve being
nicknamed after the May beetle. Or a better question: what did the May beetle
do that would suggest a resemblance to human behavior? While pollinating
flowers, did he, e.g., take off his shoe and pound it on the petals?
(4)
Brezhnev
(p. 224). This is a name of Ukrainian origin and, apparently, it is also in the
nickname category—from berezhnyj
(‘cautious,’ ‘solicitous’).
(5)
Gorbachev
(p. 129, 224). Another nickname name, from gorbach
(‘hunchback’).
(6)
El’tsin.
This name is not listed in Unbegaun’s book, but a similar name, El’tsov (p. 151) comes from ‘a fish of
the carp family’ (another nickname surname).
(7)
Putin.
Also not listed. It would seem, logically, to come from put’ (‘path,’ ‘way,’ ‘road’), and it may have been, originally, a
nickname: ‘Wanderer,’ or ‘Wayfarer’ (see end of this article for a different
take on Putin’s name).
(8)
Medvedev
(‘Bearman’—p. 146, 150). Obviously another surname derived from a nickname.
There must have been a lot of clumsy, shaggy peasants nicknamed ‘bear’ all over
Russia in the past, since
Medvedev is a common name in present-day Russia . Unbegaun mentions two other
Russian ‘bear names,’ Medvednikov or Medvezhnikov (p. 93), which may be traced
back to ‘a bear hunter’ or ‘a trader in bear hides.’
The original word, medved’,
with no patronymic ending added, is still used as a surname in Russia (p. 19,
29, 30, 161). These bare (no pun intended) nicknames as surnames (unlike in
English and in other Slavic languages), just as trade names with no endings (Tkach, ‘Weaver’), are relatively rare
today. See also Zhuk (‘Beetle’) and Sokol (‘Falcon’).
Russians are somehow uncomfortable
with un-suffixed straight nicknames as surnames; one thing that makes for
confusion is the problem of differentiating such surnames in conversation from
the actual name of the animal or trade. You can’t say, e.g., “We were there
with the Medveds,” if you are referring to a family named Medved’, because this
sounds exactly like “We were there with the bears” (p. 29-30). For Russians the
un-suffixed nickname as last name often sounds somewhat “low class” as well,
probably because peasants were the last social class to acquire surnames, and,
possibly, those peasants who were left with just the nickname (for their
surname) were the poorest and least prestigious persons in the whole society.
Unbegaun cites an example (p. 346) indicating
that the name Medvedev was more
prestigious than Medved’. In 1689 the
well-known Orthodox church figure, scholar and literary man, Sylvester Medvedev
(1641-1691), who had become involved in a political plot, was defrocked and
renamed Senka Medved’. Part of his punishment and disgrace, therefore, involved
converting his surname into a nickname, which was in tune with his lowered
social status. Ultimately, he was executed.[iii]
The most remarkable thing about the
above information is that most recent Russian leaders have names that derive
originally from nicknames. This proves that their ancestors were common folk,
not members of the gentry (dvorjanstvo) or aristocracy. One might (dangerously)
speculate that the country may well have been directed onto a Western,
democratic path, had there been rulers with higher-class names in power. After
all, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the two/three percent of
Russians who belonged to the gentry were among the most progressive and
liberal. Russians with folk backgrounds haul with them through life a huge load
of psychic baggage that is, basically, undemocratic and non-progressive--reeking
in fatalism, superstition and irrationality. Anti-democratic tendencies are not
“in the blood” or “in the genotype,” as Russians are so fond of repeating, but
they are present in the hardened stereotypes of cultural mores.
Folk mores die out very slowly; they are passed on from generation to
generation. If your name is Medvedev (or even Medved’), that does not stop you
from getting a good education. You may listen to Western rock music and be
fascinated by the Internet, but you still have (at least subconsciously) all
the detritus of your ancestors, the Medvedevs, piled up in your psyche. Can you
overcome this? Maybe. Would the Meshcherskijs and the Obolenskijs (and various
other people with “princely” names—the Golytsins, Sheremetevs, Vorontsovs or
Yelagins) have had a better chance at throwing off the yoke of the “peasant/Asian”
Russian mindset and setting off on more progressive paths? Maybe. But then
again, that mindset is such a mighty source for Russian obscuritanism that even
the most educated people and those with the most “high class” names often get
themselves immersed in it. I have known a lot of Russians with candidate
degrees (rough equivalent of the PhD), and most of these persons believe in the
“Evil Eye.”
Another sad truth: Catherine the Great (whose background was far from
peasant Russia ) hobnobbed
with the great thinkers of the French Enlightenment, but she did not direct Russia onto the
path taken by Western democracies. One final example: I have never met a
Golytsin or an Obolenskij with a candidate degree, but I have met (in U.S.
emigration) a family of Trubetskoys whose way of thinking and behaving could
serve as an exemplar for restructuring the reactionary Russian mentality and
overcoming the thousand-year-old burden of stereotypical thinking. If only we
could convince these Trubetskoys to return to Russia and set about propagating
their mindset to the Russian masses and the new oligarchs and the ruling elite!
When I suggested this to the patriarch of the family and asked him why he did
not wish to repatriate himself, he answered in one word: mental’nost’ (‘the mentality’). “What, exactly, do you mean by
that?” I asked, and he answered with that one word again, pounding lightly with
his fist on the table: mental’nost’.
In closing we might mention one other (rare) type of Russian surname
(see p. 182). In the eighteenth century certain Russian aristocrats began
naming their illegitimate children by dropping the beginning syllables of their
names and creating new, truncated names. Among the most famous of these are (1)
Pnin-- surname of the writer I.P.
Pnin (1775-1805), illegitimate son of Prince Repnin (later Vladimir Nabokov
used the name for the bungling old émigré professor in his eponymous novel) (2)
Betskoj--surname of the famous political
figure and educator under Catherine the Great, I.I. Betskoj (1704-1795),
illegitimate son of Prince Trubetskoj.
This practice has recently inspired a creative (and irreverent) Russian
blogger to come up with ideas about the derivation of other surnames. According
to this blogger (we will not disclose his moniker here—he probably has troubles
enough already), Lenin was the illegitimate son of a certain Alenin, a
swineherd who lived in a village near Simbirsk. This Alenin himself, by some
skewed logic, was, ostensibly, the illegitimate son of Pushkin’s fictional character,
Graf Nulin (Count Zilch). As for Stalin (Dzhugashvili), he descended (illegitimately,
of course) from a certain Graf Dermóstalin, whom Peter the Great had brought to
Russia from Georgia . After
beginning his career as a collector of offal, this Dzhugashvili performed in
the dwarf retinue of the tsar, and was, subsequently, rewarded with a new name,
an estate, and a title in the nobility (“Count Krápstalin”).
Finally, Vladimir Putin, according to this anonymous Internet wag (and
this is why the Russian Internet will soon be censored or closed down), is the
illegitimate son of Gregory Rasputin, who did not die after all in 1916, but crawled
out from beneath the ice of the Neva River in St. Petersburg, brushed himself
off, and made his way, on foot, back to his native village in Siberia, where he
lived on into his nineties, siring sixteen children--the thirteenth of which
was Vovochka Putin.
More Russians with a sense of humor, by the way, have already assigned
the new “bear president” a different nickname. He is ironically and
affectionately called medvezhonok:
‘Baby Bear.’
[i] See Uspenskij’s afterword (which, in typical Russian fashion, he calls
“In Lieu of an Afterword”), p. 359, and Unbegaun’s introduction, p. 16.
[ii] For more detail and further speculation on this, see p. 186 and 334. One
theory about why Lenin took this name is that he was inspired by G.V.
Plekhanov, the “father of Russian social democracy” and a hard-line orthodox
Marxist (whose surname comes from a nickname, ‘pleshivyj’=’baldy’—p. 127). Plekhanov
had named himself after the Volga
River
[iii] None of this is to suggest that someone with a plebeian nickname surname
has no chance to achieve success in modern-day Russia . For example, Aleksandr
Vasilievich Medved’ (born 1937) is a famous Russian athlete, who won medals at
the Olympic Games three times (1964, 1968, 1972).
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