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Russian surnames of illegitimate children

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In the Russian Empire, illegitimate children were sometimes given artificial surnames, rather than the surnames of their parents. In some cases an illegitimate child of a Russian aristocrat was given a surname derived from the surname of the father by truncation of the first syllable. For example, Trubetskoy -> Betskoy. There were some other ways to hint at the parent's surname, while in still other cases new surnames had no direct relation to that of parent's.[1][2][3]

Other truncated surnames include: Yelagin -> Agin, Repnin -> Pnin, Golitsyn -> Litsyn, deLitsyn [ru], Vorontsov -> Rantsov, Rumyantsev -> Umyantsev,[1] Potemkin -> Temkina.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Boris Unbegaun, Russian surnames, — Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; Russian version: Русские фамилии, 1989, Chapter IX: "Artificial surnames"
  2. ^ НЕСТАНДАРТНЫЕ РУССКИЕ ФАМИЛИИ, citing Суслова А.В., Суперанская А.В., О русских именах, Л.: Лениздат, 1991
  3. ^ И. М. Ганжина (I. M. Ganzhina). "Словарь современных русских фамилий" (Dictionary of Modern Russian Last Names). Moscow, 2001. ISBN 5-237-04101-9

Further reading

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