Ivan the Terrible (Grozny) Or Mysterious Russian Surnames

Yelena McCafferty asked:




My husband now has a habit of asking me what this or that Russian surname means every time he hears a new one. Indeed, they can be so funny! Boar, Cat, Goat – I’ve never come across them in English, yet they do exist in Russian – Kabanov, Koshkin, Kozlov.

Some surnames are universal, of course. White would have a Russian equivalent of “Belov”, Peters – “Petrov”. The ending -ov, -ev or -in would refer to “son of” and -ova, -eva and -ina presuppose “daughter of”. Blinov is another awkward one, it means a “pancake”. I guess someone would have been given this last name because they looked somewhat tubby or flat. This last example demonstrates another way of how surnames were coined – they started as nicknames! Someone with the last name of Boytsov would have been a brave fighter! This one is more to do with personal qualities, rather than looks. Medvedev, the surname of the current Russian president, refers to a “bear”, I am really not sure whether his ancestors were called that for their looks or clumsiness!

How about Putin? What does his name mean? My guess is it comes from put’- the way – a very suitable surname for a leader!

The most common Russian surname is Smirnov, with Ivanov (Jones in English) coming up second.

You can track down the origin of quite a few Russian surnames easily and many are obvious. Yet, if you hear the Irish McCafferty, my married name, you wouldn’t know it means daughter of a horse-rider, so in Russian, I should be Vsadnikova, I suppose!

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