Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

hey sheena, its nice to know there is someone out there who is educated enough to know about my name, over here in the UK people don't know about it, it really does drive me crazy. also people here pronounce it how its spelt, another thing that grates on me, as you know its pronounced varnya, my husband tells me i should put the R in it so people say it correctly, but why the hell should I... my mum called me vanya after her favorite play Uncle vanya by Anton Chekhov.
my grandmother when to russia about 20 years ago, and when she was talking to the locals about her family, they thought it really strange she had a grandaughter with a boys name, but then i would if someone said their son was called Linda......LOL!!
thanks for the welcome guys N gals.

pix coming soon....

Vanya, the thing is, i was born & live in Russia... and i'm very glad that Russian writers are known all around the globe, Chekhov is one of my favourites, too...
(oh, and i'm also often asked how come a Russian lady have an Irish name )
Waiting for pics...

that helps.... how did you come by you're name??

I once had a conversation at a party with a young woman from Russia...she asked me if I read any of the Russian writers. I replied that I did. She said her favorite was Tolstoy, and we talked about him for a few minutes. At one point, I said wasn't it terrible the way he died...she asked me what I meant, and I said you know, all that stabbed-to-death-with-an-ice-pick-in-Mexico-City business. She looked shocked and confused for a moment, then smiled kindly and said: "No, that was Trotsky..."

Hey, what can I say: it was the alcohol talking...

thats the sort of thing i would come out with,, thats great....

I think my confusion can be forgiven since the two have so much in common...first and foremost being the fact that they both start with "T" and end with "y". Hey, wait a minute: so do I...guess I better watch myself in Mexico City...

Nahh, who am I kidding...the closest I'd probably come to meeting with Trotsky's fate would be getting mugged for my wallet and passport trying to smoke one out in back of the Frida Kahlo museum...

N-nice version, Dane...
You see, Vanya, as i've explained in some other thread, it depends on the parents. For instance, when "soap operas" from Mexico were popular, a lot of newborn children were named Marianna or Anna Maria (girls) or even Louis Alberto (boys). "Louis Alberto Ivanovich" is similar to... let's say, $.10 strings on a $3K guitar. So in fact, my case is not the worst one.
Another popular reason for the names choice here was once a relation to revolution, communism, etc. For instance, there were lots of girls named Gertruda. Nothing to do with prince Hamlet's mom, it was actually derived from "Geroy truda" (Hero of labour). "Roy" here is actually an abbreviation for "Revolution - October" if i'm not mistaken.
That pretty much explains everything...

...oh, by the way, they also have the same first name - Lev (Tolstoy and Trotsky, i mean).

See? So my mistake was perfectly natural! It's no different than confusing Washington with Westmoreland...

Writers to Generals what a segue. Dane you crack me up.

It's no different than confusing Washington with Westmoreland...

One has a monument shaped like a dick, the other was a monumental... oh, wait.

Another segue. Alan that's bad!!!

This is way-off Ric guitar topics but of course Sheena is quite correct. Russian speaking people very often use nick names. There are Mashas, Mischas and Zhenyas all over the place.
And yes, during Soviet times parents would give children bizarre names. My wife went to college with someone named “Lem” named after Lenin-Engels-Marx. And someone else was named after one of the five-year plans. But neither my wife or I have ever heard of “Roy” named after the October (1917) Revolution.
Sheena, where does the “y” come from?
Ironically, in English, the name Roy is from the Latin word for king (rex). Think Leroy, royal, regal, etc..

And speaking of Trotsy, while he was living in Mexico he and his wife, for a time, lived with the famous painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Trotsky and Kahlo also had an affair.

It's just a [j] sound added in the end, in Russian the sound is denoted by a "not-so-significant" letter, Mark (mmm... i dunno how to explain it better; the letter is just to add a certain "effect" to the sound, create a diphthong or something...); "Ro" would sound (and look) a bit strange even for us! And there were lots of other interesting names; for instance, the parents named their kid Jaures, he became famous, and his French colleagues thought it's not a name but a surname! "Rem" is for "Revolution-Engels-Marx", "Vilen" is for "V. I. Lenin" etc. Nowadays, the names given to children are sometimes even more exotic but for other reasons...
One remark: "Masha", "Misha" etc. are not considered to be nicknames here... they're called "short names", and albeit they are not usually listed in the passports, they are often used quite officially...
The guitars?..

The Russians have NOTHING on Brasilians when it comes to naming their offspring.

Many Brasilians worship American culture and adopt Americans as personal heroes, using their American hero's surnames as first names. Hence, you will meet Brasilians with names like Armstrong Aldrin Collins da Silva (after the Apollo astronauts), or with first names like Kennedy or Johnson.

My favorite is an old one--Edison. But after exhausting one generation of Edisons this-and-that, the name began to metamorphose into some bizarre variations, to wit:

Edmilson, Ednilson, Edmilton, Edson, and others which escape me at the moment.

You will also find Nelson, Nilson, Nillson, Nilsson.

One of my favorites is "Rockefeller" (as a first name). In Brasilian Portuguese, it comes out, "HOCK-a-feller", as in expectorate.