How to find out the history of your last name. Where did the surname come from?

Not to express deep respect to the image of the leader is to endanger not only yourself, but also your entire family

Human society is constantly experimenting with how it can arrange itself in such a way that most of its members would be as comfortable as possible. From the outside, this probably looks like the attempts of a rheumatic fat man to make himself more comfortable on a flimsy couch with sharp corners: no matter how he turns, the poor fellow will certainly pinch something on himself, or he will serve time.

Some particularly desperate experiments were costly. Take, for example, the 20th century. The entire planet was a gigantic testing ground where two systems clashed in rivalry. Society is against individuality, totalitarianism is against democracy, order is against chaos. As we know, chaos won, which is not surprising. You see, it takes a lot of effort to ruin chaos, while the most perfect order can be destroyed with one well-placed bowl of chili.

Order does not tolerate mistakes, but chaos... chaos feeds on them.

Love of freedom is a vile quality that interferes with ordered happiness

A demonstration defeat took place at two experimental sites. Two countries were taken: one in Europe, the second in Asia. Germany and Korea were neatly divided in half and in both cases a market, elections, freedom of speech and individual rights were introduced in one half, while the other half was ordered to build an ideally fair and well-functioning social system, in which the individual has the only right - to serve the common good.

However, the German experiment went unsuccessfully from the very beginning. Cultural traditions Even Hitler did not completely exterminate the freedom-loving Germans - where does Honecker belong? And it is difficult to create a socialist society right in the middle of the swamp of decaying capitalism. It is not surprising that the GDR, no matter how much effort and money was poured into it, did not demonstrate any brilliant success; it produced the most pathetic economy, and its inhabitants, instead of being filled with a competitive spirit, preferred to run to their Western relatives, masquerading at the border as the contents of their suitcases.

The Korean site promised great success. Still, the Asian mentality is historically more inclined towards submission, total control, and even more so if we're talking about the Koreans, who lived under Japanese protectorate for almost half a century and had all sorts of freedoms, had long been forgotten.

Juche forever

After a series of rather bloody political upheavals, a former captain became the almost sole ruler of the DPRK Soviet army Kim Il Sung. He was once a partisan who fought against the Japanese occupation, then, like many Korean communists, he ended up in the USSR and in 1945 returned to his homeland to build a new order. Knowing the Stalinist regime well, he managed to recreate it in Korea, and the copy in many ways surpassed the original.

The entire population of the country was divided into 51 groups social background degree of loyalty to the new regime. Moreover, unlike the USSR, it was not even kept silent that the very fact of your birth in the “wrong” family can be a crime: exiles and camps here for more than half a century have officially sent not only criminals, but also all members of their families, including minors children. The main ideology of the state became the “Juche idea”, which with some stretch can be translated as “reliance on own strength" The essence of ideology comes down to the following provisions.

North Korea is the most great country in the world. Very good. All other countries are bad. There are very bad ones, and there are inferior ones who are in slavery to the very bad ones. There are also countries that are not exactly bad, but also bad. For example, China and the USSR. They followed the path of communism, but distorted it, and this is wrong.

The characteristic features of a Caucasian are always signs of an enemy

Only North Koreans live happily, all other peoples eke out a miserable existence. The most unhappy country in the world is South Korea. It has been taken over by the damned imperialist bastards, and all South Koreans are divided into two categories: jackals, vile minions of the regime, and oppressed pathetic beggars who are too cowardly to drive out the Americans.

Most great person in the world - the great leader Kim Il Sung. (By the way, in Korea we would have been exiled to a camp for this phrase. Because Koreans are taught from kindergarten that the name of the great leader Kim Il Sung should appear at the beginning of the sentence. Damn, they would have exiled us for this one too...) He liberated the country and expelled the damned Japanese. He is the wisest man on Earth. He is a living god. That is, he is already lifeless, but this does not matter, because he is forever alive. Everything you have was given to you by Kim Il Sung. The second great man is the son of the great leader Kim Il Sung, the beloved leader Kim Jong Il. The third is the current owner of the DPRK, the grandson of the great leader, the brilliant comrade Kim Jong-un. We express our love for Kim Il Sung through hard work. We love to work. We also love to learn the Juche idea.

We North Koreans are great happy people. Hooray!

Magic levers

Kim Il Sung and his closest aides were, of course, crocodiles. But these crocodiles had good intentions. They were really trying to create an ideally happy society. And when is a person happy? From the point of view of order theory, a person is happy when he takes his place, knows exactly what to do, and is satisfied with the existing state of affairs. Unfortunately, the one who created people made many mistakes in his creation. For example, he instilled in us a craving for freedom, independence, adventurism, risk, as well as pride and the desire to express our thoughts out loud.

All these vile human qualities interfered with a state of complete, orderly happiness. But Kim Il Sung knew well what levers could be used to control a person. These levers - love, fear, ignorance and control - are fully involved in Korean ideology. That is, they are also involved a little in all other ideologies, but no one here can keep up with the Koreans.

Ignorance

Until the early 80s, televisions in the country were distributed only according to party lists

Any unofficial information is completely illegal in the country. There is no access to any foreign newspapers or magazines. There is practically no literature as such, except for the officially approved works of modern North Korean writers, which, by and large, amount to praising the ideas of the Juche and the great leader.

Moreover, even North Korean newspapers cannot be stored here for too long: according to A.N. Lankov, one of the few specialists on the DPRK, it is almost impossible to obtain a fifteen-year-old newspaper even in a special storage facility. Still would! Party policy sometimes has to change, and there is no need for the average person to follow these fluctuations.

Koreans have radios, but each device must be sealed in the workshop so that it can only receive a few government radio channels. For keeping an unsealed receiver at home, you are immediately sent to a camp, along with your entire family.

There are televisions, but the cost of a device made in Taiwan or Russia, but with a Korean brand stuck on top of the manufacturer’s mark, is equal to approximately five years’ salary of an employee. So few people can watch TV, two state channels, especially considering that electricity is in residential buildings It only turns on for a few hours a day. However, there is nothing to watch there, unless, of course, you count hymns to the leader, children's parades in honor of the leader and monstrous cartoons about how you need to study well in order to fight well against the damned imperialists.

North Koreans, of course, do not travel abroad, except for a tiny layer of members of the party elite. Some specialists can use Internet access with special permits - several institutions have computers connected to the Internet. But to sit down at them, a scientist needs to have a bunch of passes, and any visit to any site is naturally registered and then carefully studied by the security service.

Luxury housing for the elite. There is even a sewerage system and elevators work in the mornings!

In the world official information A fabulous lie is happening. What they say in the news is not just a distortion of reality - it has nothing to do with it. Did you know that the average American ration does not exceed 300 grams of grains per day? At the same time, they do not have rations as such; they must earn their three hundred grams of corn in a factory, where the police beat them, so that the Americans work better.

Lankov gives a charming example from a North Korean textbook for the third grade: “A South Korean boy, in order to save his dying sister from hunger, donated a liter of blood for American soldiers. With this money he bought rice cake for his sister. How many liters of blood must he donate so that half a cake will also go to him, his unemployed mother and his old grandmother?

The North Korean knows practically nothing about the world around him; he knows neither the past, nor the future, and even exact sciences in local schools and institutes they are taught with the distortions required by the official ideology. Such an information vacuum, of course, comes at a fantastic price. low level science and culture. But it's worth it.

Love

The North Korean has almost no understanding of the real world

Love brings happiness, and this, by the way, is very good if you make a person love what he needs. The North Korean loves his leader and his country, and they help him in every way possible. Every adult Korean is required to wear a pin with a portrait of Kim Il Sung on his lapel; in every house, institution, in every apartment there should be a portrait of the leader hanging. The portrait should be cleaned daily with a brush and wiped with a dry cloth. So, for this brush there is a special drawer, standing in a place of honor in the apartment. There should be nothing else on the wall on which the portrait hangs, no patterns or pictures - this is disrespectful. Until the seventies, damage to a portrait, even unintentional, was punishable by execution; in the eighties, this could have been done with exile.

The eleven-hour working day of a North Korean daily begins and ends with half-hour political information, which tells about how good it is to live in the DPRK and how great and beautiful the leaders of the greatest country in the world are. On Sunday, the only non-working day, colleagues are supposed to meet together to once again discuss the Juche idea.

The most important school subject- study of the biography of Kim Il Sung. In each kindergarten, for example, there is a carefully guarded layout native village leader, preschool children are obliged to show without hesitation exactly under which tree “the great leader, at the age of five, reflected on the fate of humanity,” and where he “trained his body through sports and hardening to fight the Japanese invaders.” There is not a single song in the country that does not contain the name of the leader.

All the youth in the country serve in the army. There are simply no young people on the streets

Control over the state of minds of the citizens of the DPRK is carried out by the MTF and MOB, or the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Public Security. Moreover, the MTF is in charge of ideology and deals only with serious political offenses of the residents, while ordinary control over the lives of Koreans is under the jurisdiction of the MTF. It is the MOB patrols that carry out raids on apartments for their political decency and collect denunciations from citizens against each other.

But, naturally, no ministries would be enough for vigil, so the country has created a system of “inminbans”. Any housing in the DPRK is included in one or another inminban - usually twenty, thirty, rarely forty families. Each inminban has a headman - a person responsible for everything that happens in the cell. Every week, the head of the Inminban is obliged to report to the representative of the Ministry of Public Security about what is happening in the area entrusted to him, whether there is anything suspicious, whether anyone has uttered sedition, or whether there is unregistered radio equipment. The head of the Inminban has the right to enter any apartment at any time of the day or night; not letting him in is a crime.

Every person who comes to a house or apartment for more than a few hours is required to register with the headman, especially if he intends to stay overnight. The apartment owners and the guest must provide the warden with a written explanation of the reason for the overnight stay. If, during a MOB raid, unaccounted-for guests are found in the house, not only the owners of the apartment, but also the headman will go to a special settlement. In particularly obvious cases of sedition, responsibility may fall on all members of the inminban at once - for failure to report. For example, for an unauthorized visit of a foreigner to a Korean’s home, several dozen families may end up in the camp at once if they saw him, but hid the information.

Traffic jams in a country where there is no private transport are, as we see, a rare phenomenon

However, unaccounted guests are rare in Korea. The fact is that you can move from city to city and from village to village only with special passes, which the elders of the inminbans receive at the Moscow Public Library. You can wait months for such permits. And to Pyongyang, for example, no one can go to Pyongyang just like that: people from other regions are allowed into the capital only for official reasons.

Fear

The DPRK is ready to fight the imperialist vermin with machine guns, calculators and volumes of Juche

According to human rights organizations, approximately 15 percent of all North Koreans live in camps and special settlements.

There are regimes of varying severity, but usually these are simply areas surrounded by energized barbed wire where prisoners live in dugouts and shacks. In strict regimes, women, men and children are kept separately, while in regular regimes, families are not prohibited from living together. Prisoners cultivate the land or work in factories. The working day here lasts 18 hours, that's all free time reserved for sleep.

The biggest problem in the camp is hunger. A defector to South Korea, Kang Cheol Hwan, who managed to escape from the camp and get out of the country, testifies that the standard diet for an adult camp resident was 290 grams of millet or corn per day. The prisoners eat rats, mice and frogs - this is a rare delicacy; a rat corpse is of great value here. The mortality rate reaches approximately 30 percent in the first five years, the reason for this is hunger, exhaustion and beatings.

Also a popular measure for political offenders (as well as for criminal ones) is the death penalty. It is automatically applied when it comes to such serious violations as disrespectful words addressed to the great leader. Death executions are carried out publicly, by shooting. High school and student excursions are brought to them so that young people get a correct idea of what is good and what is bad.

That's how they lived

Portraits of precious leaders hang even in the subway, in every car

The life of a North Korean who has not yet been convicted, however, cannot be called a raspberry. As a child, he spends almost all his free time in kindergarten and school, since his parents have no time to sit with him: they are always at work. At seventeen, he is drafted into the army, where he serves for ten years (for women, the service life is reduced to eight). Only after the army can he go to college and get married (marriage is prohibited for men under 27 and women under 25).

He lives in a tiny apartment, 18 meters of total area here is very comfortable housing for a family. If he is not a resident of Pyongyang, then with a 99 percent probability he has neither water supply nor sewerage in his house; even in cities there are water pumps and wooden toilets in front of apartment buildings.

He eats meat and sweets four times a year, on national holidays, when residents are given coupons for these types of food. Usually he feeds on rice, corn and millet, which he receives on ration cards at the rate of 500–600 grams per adult in “well-fed” years. Once a year he is allowed to receive ration cards for 80 kilograms of cabbage in order to pickle it. Small free market here in last years got started, but the cost of a skinny chicken is equal to the monthly salary of an employee. Party officials, however, eat quite decently: they receive food from special distributors and differ from the very lean rest of the population by being pleasantly plump.

Almost all women have their hair cut short and permed, since the great leader once said that this particular hairstyle suits Korean women very well. Now wearing a different hairstyle is like signing your own disloyalty. Long hair Men's haircuts are strictly prohibited; haircuts longer than five centimeters can lead to arrest.

Experiment results

Ceremonial children from a privileged Pyongyang kindergarten allowed to be shown to foreigners

Deplorable. Poverty, a practically non-functioning economy, population decline - all these signs of failed social experience got out of control during Kim Il Sung's lifetime. In the nineties, real famine came to the country, caused by drought and the cessation of food supplies from the collapsed USSR.

Pyongyang tried to hush up the true scale of the disaster, but, according to experts who studied satellite imagery, approximately two million people died of hunger during these years, that is, every tenth Korean died. Despite the fact that the DPRK was a rogue state, guilty of nuclear blackmail, the world community began to supply it humanitarian aid, which is what he still does.

Love for the leader helps not to go crazy - this is the state version of the “Stockholm syndrome”

In 1994, Kim Il Sung died, and since then the regime began to creak especially loudly. Nevertheless, nothing has changed fundamentally, except for some liberalization of the market. There are signs that suggest that the party elite North Korea ready to give up the country in exchange for guarantees of personal integrity and Swiss bank accounts.

But now South Korea no longer expresses immediate readiness for unification and forgiveness: after all, take on board 20 million people who are not adapted to modern life, is a risky business. Engineers who have never seen a computer; peasants who are excellent at cooking grass, but are unfamiliar with the basics of modern agriculture; civil servants who know the Juche formulas by heart, but do not have the slightest idea of what a toilet looks like... Sociologists predict social upheavals, stockbrokers predict St. Vitus's dance on the stock exchanges, ordinary South Koreans reasonably fear a sharp decline in living standards.

Kim Il Sung

In 1945, Soviet and American troops occupied Korea, thus freeing it from Japanese occupation. The country was divided along the 38th parallel: the north went to the USSR, the south to the USA. Some time was spent trying to agree on unifying the country back, but since the partners had different views on everything, naturally no consensus was reached and in 1948 the formation of two Koreas was officially announced. It cannot be said that the parties gave up like this, without effort. Started in 1950 Korean War, a little bit like the third world war. From the north, the USSR, China and the hastily formed North Korean army fought, the honor of the southerners was defended by the USA, Great Britain and the Philippines, and among other things, UN peacekeeping forces were still traveling back and forth across Korea, throwing a spanner in the works of both. In general, it was quite stormy.

In 1953 the war ended. True, no agreements were signed; formally, both Koreas continued to remain in a state of war. North Koreans call this war the “Patriotic Liberation War,” while South Koreans call it the “June 25 Incident.” Quite a characteristic difference in terms.

In the end, the division at the 38th parallel remained in effect. Around the border, the parties formed the so-called “demilitarized zone” - an area that is still crammed with unrecovered mines and debris. military equipment: The war is not officially over. During the war, approximately a million Chinese, two million South and North Koreans, 54,000 Americans, 5,000 British, and 315 soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army died.

After the war, the United States brought order to South Korea: they took control of the government, banned the execution of communists without trial, built military bases and poured money into the economy, so that South Korea quickly turned into one of the richest and most successful Asian states. Much more interesting things have begun in North Korea.

Photo: Reuters; Hulton Getty/Fotobank.com; Eyedea; AFP/East News; AP; Corbis/RPG.

Is a surname not a luxury?

The first owners of surnames in Rus' were noble residents of Veliky Novgorod. Since the 12th century, this area has been in a special position: it received the status of an independent republic and independently conducted business with neighboring states such as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This is where the fashion for surnames came from. And it has become much more convenient to keep track of troops this way: you won’t confuse one Mikhail, Ivan or Boris with another. For example, here is the earliest famous lists victims with the names: “Novgorodets fell: Kostyantin Lugotinits, Gyuryata Pineshchinich, Namst, Drochilo Nezdylov son of a tanner...” (First Novgorod chronicle of the older edition, 1240).

Following the Novgorodians, princes and boyars acquired surnames in the 14th-15th centuries. The first were usually named after the lands that belonged to them. So the owners of the estate on the Shuya River became the Shuiskys, on Vyazma - the Vyazemskys, on Meshchera - the Meshcherskys, the same story with the Tverskys, Obolenskys, Vorotynskys and other -skys. By the way, -sk- is a common Slavic suffix; it can be found in Czech surnames (Komensky), and in Polish (Zapototsky), and in Ukrainian (Artemovsky). The moment of origin of a surname is considered to be its preservation by descendants even after the loss of the corresponding lands.

Whose will you be?

The boyars received their surnames by the baptismal name of the ancestor or his nickname: such names answered the question “whose?” (implied “whose son?”, “what kind?”) and included possessive suffixes. The suffix -ov- was added to worldly names ending in hard consonants: Smirnoy - Smirnov, Ignat - Ignatov. -Ev- - to names and nicknames ending in b, -ii, -ey or ch: Bear - Medvedev, Yuri - Yuryev, Begich - Begichev. Well, the suffix -in- was given to surnames formed from names with the vowels “a” and “ya”: Apukhta -Apukhtin, Gavrila - Gavrilin, Ilya -Ilyin.

The most famous story the emergence of the boyar family - about the Romanovs. Their ancestor Andrei Kobyla had three sons: Semyon Stallion, Alexandra Elka Kobylin and Fyodor Koshka. They gave birth to the Zherebtsovs, Kobylins and Koshkins. The latter bore this surname for several generations until they decided that being called by a nickname was not too noble. And they first became the Yakovlevs (after the great-grandson of Fyodor Koshka) and the Zakharyins-Yuryevs (after the names of his grandson and another great-grandson), and after that they were completely entrenched in history as the Romanovs (after the great-great-grandson of Fyodor Koshka).

Many are surprised by such surnames as Durnovo, Sukhovo, Zhivago, Chernago, Sedykh, Fominykh. In fact, there is nothing strange about them, the same answer to the question “whose?”, only a little outdated or plural: Bad - Durnovo, Zhivoy - Zhivago, Sedye - Sedykh.

Russians - non-Russian surnames

The nobles were next in line to receive surnames. Among them there were a lot of people who came to serve the Russian sovereigns from other countries. It all started with surnames of Greek and Polish-Lithuanian origin at the end of the 15th century, and in the 17th century they were joined by the Fonvizins (German von Wiesen), the Lermontovs (Scottish Lermont) and other surnames with Western roots.

The Tatars also left a significant mark on Russian surnames. This is exactly how the Yusupovs (descendants of Murza Yusup), the Akhmatovs (Khan Akhmat), the Karamzins (Tatar punishment “black”, Murza “lord, prince”), the Kudinovs (distorted Kaz.-Tatar. Kudai “God, Allah”) and other.

Local, but not princes

After the nobles, ordinary service people began to receive surnames. They, like the princes, were also often called by their place of residence, only with “simpler” suffixes: families living in Tambov became Tambovtsevs, in Vologda - Vologzhaninovs, in Moscow - Moskvichevs and Moskvitinovs. Some were satisfied with the “non-family” suffix, denoting a resident of a given territory in general: Belomorets, Kostromich, Chernomorets, while others received the nickname without any changes - hence Tatyana Dunay, Alexander Galich, Olga Poltava and others.

I am Kastorsky

The surnames of clergy were made up of the names of churches and Christian holidays(Rozhdestvensky, Uspensky), and were also artificially formed from Church Slavonic, Latin and Greek words. The most interesting of them were those that were translated from Russian into Latin and received the “princely” suffix -sk-. Thus, Bobrov became Kastorsky (Latin castor “beaver”), Skvortsov became Sturnitsky (Latin sturnus “starling”), and Orlov became Aquilev (Latin aquila “eagle”).

"Strange" surnames

Peasants' surnames late XIX centuries were rare. The exceptions were non-serf peasants in the north of Russia and in the Novgorod province - hence Mikhailo Lomonosov and Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva.

After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the situation began to improve, and by the time of universal passportization in the 1930s, every resident of the USSR definitely had a surname. They were formed according to already proven models: the suffixes -ov-, -ev-, -in- were added to names, nicknames, places of residence, and professions.

Is a surname not a luxury?

The first owners of surnames in Rus' were noble residents of Veliky Novgorod

Since the 12th century, this area has been in a special position: it received the status of an independent republic and independently conducted business with neighboring states such as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This is where the fashion for surnames came from. And it has become much more convenient to keep track of troops this way: you won’t confuse one Mikhail, Ivan or Boris with another.

Here, for example, is the earliest known list of the dead with their names:

“Novgorodets fell: Kostyantin Lugotinits, Gyuryata Pineshchinich, Namst, Drochilo Nezdylov son of a tanner...” (First Novgorod chronicle of the older edition, 1240).

By the way, -sk- is a common Slavic suffix; it can be found in Czech surnames (Komensky), and in Polish (Zapototsky), and in Ukrainian (Artemovsky). The moment of origin of a surname is considered to be its preservation by descendants even after the loss of the corresponding lands.

Whose will you be?

The boyars received their surnames according to the baptismal name of the ancestor or his nickname: such names answered the question "whose?" (implied “whose son?”, “what kind?”) and included possessive suffixes. The suffix -ov- was added to worldly names ending in hard consonants: Smirnoy - Smirnov, Ignat - Ignatov. -Ev- - to names and nicknames ending in b, -ii, -ey or ch: Bear - Medvedev, Yuri - Yuryev, Begich - Begichev. Well, the suffix -in- was given to surnames formed from names with the vowels “a” and “ya”: Apukhta -Apukhtin, Gavrila - Gavrilin, Ilya -Ilyin.

And they first became the Yakovlevs (after the great-grandson of Fyodor Koshka) and the Zakharyins-Yuryevs (after the names of his grandson and another great-grandson), and after that they were completely entrenched in history as the Romanovs (after the great-great-grandson of Fyodor Koshka).

Many are surprised by such surnames as Durnovo, Sukhovo, Zhivago, Chernago, Sedykh, Fominykh. In fact, there is nothing strange in them, the same answer to the question “whose?”, only a little outdated or in the plural: Durnoy - Durnovo, Zhivoy - Zhivago, Sedye - Sedykh.

Russians - non-Russian surnames

The nobles were next in line to receive surnames. Among them there were a lot of people who came to serve the Russian sovereigns from other countries.

It all started with surnames of Greek and Polish-Lithuanian origin at the end of the 15th century, and in the 17th century they were joined by the Fonvizins (German von Wiesen), the Lermontovs (Scottish Lermont) and other surnames with Western roots.

The Tatars also left a significant mark on Russian surnames. This is exactly how the Yusupovs (descendants of Murza Yusup), the Akhmatovs (Khan Akhmat), the Karamzins (Tatar punishment “black”, Murza “lord, prince”), the Kudinovs (distorted Kaz.-Tatar. Kudai “God, Allah”) and other.

Local, but not princes

I am Kastorsky

Thus, Bobrov became Kastorsky (Latin castor “beaver”), Skvortsov became Sturnitsky (Latin sturnus “starling”), and Orlov became Aquilev (Latin aquila “eagle”).

"Strange" surnames

Until the end of the 19th century, peasant surnames were rare. The exceptions were non-serf peasants in the north of Russia and in the Novgorod province - hence Mikhailo Lomonosov and Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva.

How in your right mind could you name your child that?

The thing is that our ancestors were very superstitious and hoped to protect their child from the evil eye with such an unpleasant nickname. In this regard, it is not a fact that any modern Almazov will be more successful than Neschastlivtsev or Idiotov.

Every person has a surname, but has anyone ever wondered where it came from, who invented it, and for what purposes it is needed? There were times when people only had names, for example in the territory former Rus' This trend was observed until the 14th century. Studying the surname can tell a lot of interesting things about the history of the family, and in some cases even allows you to determine the ancestor. Just one word will tell about the well-being of the family’s ancestors, their belonging to a higher or lower class, and the presence of foreign roots.

Origin of the word "surname"

Many people are interested in where the surname came from, what it meant and for what purposes it was used. It turns out that this word is of foreign origin and originally had a completely different meaning than it does now. In the Roman Empire, the term did not refer to family members, but to slaves. A specific family name meant a group of slaves belonging to one Roman. Only in the 19th century did this word acquire its current meaning. Nowadays, a surname means a family name that is inherited and added to a person’s name.

When did the first surnames appear in Rus'?

To find out where the surnames came from, you need to go back to the 14th-15th centuries and delve into the history of Rus'. In those days, society was divided into classes. It was this conditional division that was reflected in future surnames; representatives of different strata acquired them in different time. Princes, feudal lords, and boyars were the first to acquire family names; a little later, this fashion came to merchants and nobles. Simple people They did not have surnames; they were addressed only by their first names. Only the rich and influential classes had such a privilege.

How a surname came to be can be determined by its meaning. For example, the family names of many feudal lords echo the name of their lands: Vyazemsky, Tverskaya, etc. The lands were inherited from father to son, respectively, the clan retained the surname of its founder. Many family names had roots of foreign origin, this was explained by the fact that people came from other states and settled on our lands. But this is typical only for the rich classes.

Surnames of former serfs

It turns out that even in the 19th century, having your own surname was an unaffordable luxury that the poor could not boast of, and before the abolition that took place in 1861, ordinary Russian people used names, nicknames, and patronymics. When they gained freedom and began to belong to themselves, and not to the nobles, it became necessary to come up with a surname for them. During the population census in 1897, census takers themselves came up with the names of clans for former serfs, as far as their imagination allowed. For this reason it appeared great amount namesakes, because the same names were attributed to hundreds of people.

For example, where did the surname Ivanov come from? It's very simple, the fact is that its founder's name was Ivan. Very often in such cases, the suffix “ov” or “ev” was added to the name, so the result was Alexandrov, Sidorov, Fedorov, Grigoriev, Mikhailov, Alekseev, Pavlov, Artemyev, Sergeev, etc., the list can be continued indefinitely. Where did the surname Kuznetsov come from? Here the answer is even simpler - depending on the type of occupation, there were a lot of them: Konyukhov, Plotnikov, Slesarenko, Sapozhnikov, Tkachenko, etc. Some peasants took the animal names they liked: Sobolev, Medvedev, Gusev, Lebedev, Volkov, Zhuravlev, Sinitsyn. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, the majority of the population had their own surnames.

The most common surnames

Many people are interested not only in the question of where surnames came from, but also which of them are the most common. There is an opinion that Sidorov is also the most common. Perhaps this was the case before, but today this is outdated information. Although Ivanov is among the top three, he is not in first, but in an honorable second place. Kuznetsov takes third place, but Smirnov holds the lead. The mentioned Petrov is in 11th place, but Sidorov is in 66th place.

What can prefixes, suffixes and endings tell us?

As already mentioned, the suffixes “ov” and “ev” were added to names; if they are removed, the person will receive the name of his founding ancestor. Much also depends on the stress; if it falls on the last syllable, then the surname belongs to a peasant, and on the second - to an eminent nobleman. The clergy changed the name of the clan, for example, Ivanov became Ioannov.

When asked where surnames with the suffix “sky” came from, for a long time there was no clear answer. Today, researchers agree that such names belonged to nobles of Polish blood, as well as ministers of churches dedicated to the Epiphany: Znamensky, Epiphany, Holy Cross. They are associated with such holidays as the Exaltation of the Cross, Epiphany, dedicated to the icon of the Mother of God “The Sign”.

The suffixes “in” and “yn” mainly belong to Russian Jews: Ivashkin, Fokin, Fomin. Ivashka could say something disparaging about a Jew, but Foka and Foma are purely Diminutive suffixes“uk”, “chuk”, “enk”, “onk”, “yuk” belong Slavic surnames. They are mainly found in Ukraine: Kovalchuk, Kravchuk, Litovchenko, Osipenko, Sobachenko, Gerashchenko, etc.

Random names

Not all surnames can tell about an ancient, glorious family. The fact is that most of them were simply invented by people, so such names do not even contain information about the name, occupation or place of residence of the founder. Sometimes they meet very funny cases, telling where the surnames came from. In the Soviet Union, there was active formalization, so anyone with a dissonant name could easily change it. Many people from villages (mostly young boys and girls) received their last names along with their passports. So, a policeman asked one guy: “Whose are you?” - “Papanin”, that’s how it was written down in the document. And there are a lot of such stories. Be that as it may, now every person has a surname, which can tell a lot of interesting things about the whole family.

Most of the Russian population received surnames only towards the end of the 19th century. The “second name” gradually took root among the people, and it is all the more interesting to find out how this happened.
The first owners of surnames in Rus' were noble residents of Veliky Novgorod. Since the 12th century, this area has been in a special position: it received the status of an independent republic and independently conducted business with neighboring states such as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This is where the fashion for surnames came from. And it has become much more convenient to keep track of troops this way: you won’t confuse one Mikhail, Ivan or Boris with another. Here, for example, is the earliest known list of the dead with the names: “Novgorodets fell: Kostyantin Lugotinits, Gyuryata Pineshchinich, Namst, Drochilo Nezdylov son of a tanner...” (First Novgorod chronicle of the older edition, 1240).

Whose will you be?

The most famous story of the origin of the boyar family is about the Romanovs. Their ancestor Andrei Kobyla had three sons: Semyon Zherebets, Alexander Elk Kobylin and Fyodor Koshka. They gave birth to the Zherebtsovs, Kobylins and Koshkins. The latter bore this surname for several generations until they decided that being called by a nickname was not too noble. And they first became the Yakovlevs (after the great-grandson of Fyodor Koshka) and the Zakharyins-Yuryevs (after the names of his grandson and another great-grandson), and after that they were completely entrenched in history as the Romanovs (after the great-great-grandson of Fyodor Koshka).
Many are surprised by such surnames as Durnovo, Sukhovo, Zhivago, Chernago, Sedykh, Fominykh. In fact, there is nothing strange in them, the same answer to the question “whose?”, only a little outdated or in the plural: Durnoy - Durnovo, Zhivoy - Zhivago, Sedye - Sedykh.

Russians - non-Russian surnames

The surnames that were given to the illegitimate children of noble people have foreign language roots: Sherov (French cher “dear”), Amantov (French amant “beloved”), Oksov (German Ochs “bull”), Herzen (German Herz “heart” ). By-product children generally “suffered” a lot from their parents’ imagination. Some of them did not bother to come up with a new surname, but simply shortened the old one: this is how Pnin was born from Repnin, Betskoy from Trubetskoy, Agin from Elagin, and the “Koreans” Go and Te came from Golitsyn and Tenishev.
The Tatars also left a significant mark on Russian surnames. This is exactly how the Yusupovs (descendants of Murza Yusup), the Akhmatovs (Khan Akhmat), the Karamzins (Tatar punishment “black”, Murza “lord, prince”), the Kudinovs (distorted Kaz.-Tatar. Kudai “God, Allah”) and other.

Local, but not princes

I am Kastorsky

The surnames of clergy were formed from the names of churches and Christian holidays (Rozhdestvensky, Uspensky), and were also artificially formed from Church Slavonic, Latin and Greek words. The most interesting of them were those that were translated from Russian into Latin and received the “princely” suffix -sk-. Thus, Bobrov became Kastorsky (Latin castor “beaver”), Skvortsov became Sturnitsky (Latin sturnus “starling”), and Orlov became Aquilev (Latin aquila “eagle”).

"Strange" surnames

They turned out to be quite nice Petrovs, Ivanovs, Bochkarevs, Kuznetsovs, Melnikovs, Pryakhins and others. However, the Perdunovs, Smertins and other Fools emerged from somewhere. It is clear that they also originated from the nicknames: Fart, Death, Fool, which, deservedly or not, were given to their neighbors by their fellow tribesmen. But even the parents themselves sometimes called their children quite offensive names: Nelyub, Nenash, Bad, Blockhead, Kruchina. How in your right mind could you name your child that? The thing is that our ancestors were very superstitious and hoped to protect their child from the evil eye with such an unpleasant nickname. In this regard, it is not a fact that any modern Almazov will be more successful than Neschastlivtsev or Idiotov.
And finally... Photo above. The child's face is blurred.. Why? Yes, because when photography first appeared, in order to take a good photo by those standards, you had to sit still for several minutes. Adults sat naturally, but you can’t explain this to a child. Therefore this is the result. By the way, this photo is most likely of fairly wealthy peasants, since photography was very expensive at that time.