Russia Naming Customs

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Russia

Personal Names

Understanding customs used in surnames and given names can help you identify your ancestors in records. Learn to recognize name variations and see clues in names.

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Surnames

Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional way of identifying a person's given name and patronymic name in countries formerly part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.

They are commonly used in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and to an extent in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia (country).

In modern Russia, names consist of a GIVEN NAME (imia), a PATRONYMIC (otchestvo), and a SURNAME (familiia).

Name	Example: Cyrillic alphabet	Example: Anglicised form
First name (given name)	Владимир	Vladimir
Patronymic	Антонович	Antonovich
Family name (surname)	Иванов	Ivanov

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For Further Reading

Paul Goldschmidt's Dictionary of Russian Names-Grammar
Eastern Slavic naming customs in Wikipedia
Russian given name in Wikipedia

Additional sources are listed in the FamilySearch Catalog: