About the benefits of narcissism, elite peasant surnames, offensive nicknames and the NEP freelancer. We continue to talk about where the surnames came from in Russia and how they were changed, if you really didn't like them. First part.
Study well and become a Hyacinth
Have you ever met a person by the name of Dukhososhestsky? And what about Hyacinths, Dobromyslov, Golubinsky, Tikhomirov? All these comrades are united by one thing: their ancestors were the best students of seminaries, for which they received beautiful surnames as a reward. They also stood out for their unconditionally positive meaning. For euphony, surnames were often translated into Latin and Greek. So, Veselov became Gilyarovsky (from the Latin hilaris - "cheerful"), Nadezhdin - Speransky (from the Latin verb spero - "to hope, hope"), and Benevolensky (bene - "good", Latin) coexisted with Dobrovolsky.
As a reward for victories in battles, they received nicknames, which later became surnames, and commanders: Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy. But Yuri Dolgoruky, according to the historian Mikhail Shcherbatov, was named so for "greed for acquisition" - for the constant encroachment on foreign lands. Here, the meaning would fit, probably, Yuri Zagrebushie Hands.
Aristocracy from timber rafting
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"Counts Razumovsky" sounds a lot like aristocratic. And you will not suspect that in the origins of the family there is a Ukrainian Cossack who loved to drink and praise himself in a drunken state: "Well, that's for the head, that's for the rosum!" So his fellow villagers called him Rozum. His son, Alexei, inherited the nickname, but was written down by Razumovsky. And then, as we know, the son of the Dnieper Cossack Grigory Rozum became the favorite of Empress Elizabeth and the most influential person in the Russian Empire.
Also from the vocabulary of the ancestor was born the surname of the hero of the Civil War Vasily Chapaev. His grandfather worked as a senior on timber rafting and every now and then shouted at the artel workers: “Chepay!”, That is, “hook the log with a hook”. Hence the nickname Chepay went, then transformed into Chepaev-Chapaev. By the way, Vasily Ivanovich himself wrote his last name through "e".
But the artist Vasily Perov became one for diligence. The illegitimate son of prosecutor Kridener, he did not have the right to his father's surname, although his parents later got married. The clerk who taught him to read and write called Vasily Perov for his diligence and success in pen.
Whole villages of namesakes
The peasants were named after the landlord. And if for the Oleandrovs and Sevensvetovs their personal "label" served as a source of pride - a rarity after all - then entire villages of the Polivanovs, Gagarins, Vorontsovs accepted their fate philosophically. As they say, nothing personal - there are dozens of namesakes around.
It was the same with the Ivanovs, Petrovs, named after their father.
Even less original were those named after the peculiarities of the area in which they lived - Bolotiny, Roshchiny, Pushchiny, Lugovye. But it is quite euphonic. But the Khrenovs, who lived in the places where this vigorous plant grows, were less fortunate. As well as the familiar nickname of the ancestor.
Author: Maria Anisimova