It is not so easy to answer the question of when Russians got surnames. The fact is that surnames in Rus' were formed mainly from patronymics, nicknames or family names, and this process was gradual.
Novgorod surnames
It is believed that the first in Rus' to bear surnames were citizens of Veliky Novgorod, which was then a republic, as well as residents of the Novgorod possessions, which stretched throughout the north from the Baltic to the Urals. This supposedly happened in the 13th century.
Thus, in the chronicle for 1240 the names of the Novgorodians who fell in the Battle of Neva are mentioned: “Kostyantin Lugotinits, Guryata Pineshchinich.” In the chronicle of 1268, the names of “Tverdislav Chermny, Nikifor Radyatinich, Tverdislav Moisievich, Mikhail Krivtsevich, Boris Ildyatinich... Vasil Voiborzovich, Zhiroslav Dorogomilovich, Poroman Podvoisky” are found. In 1270, as the chronicler reports, Prince Vasily Yaroslavich went on a campaign against the Tatars, taking with him “Petril Rychag and Mikhail Pineshchinich.”
As we can see, these surnames bore little resemblance to modern ones and were formed, most likely, by patronymics, family or baptismal names, nicknames or place of residence.
Originally from the North
Perhaps the most ancient surnames should still be considered surnames ending with the suffixes -ih and -ih. According to experts, they appeared at the turn of the 1st-2nd millennium and originated mainly from family nicknames. For example, members of one family could be given nicknames such as Short, White, Red, Black, and their descendants were called in the genitive or prepositional case: “Whose will you be?” - “Short, White, Red, Black.” Doctor of Philology A.V. Superanskaya writes: “The head of the family is called Golden, the whole family is called Golden. A native or descendants of a family in the next generation are Golden.”
Historians suggest that these surnames were born in the north, and subsequently spread to the central regions of Rus' and the Urals. Many such surnames are found among Siberians: this was associated with the beginning of the conquest of Siberia in the second half of the 16th century. By the way, according to the rules of the Russian language, such surnames are not declined.
Surnames from Slavic names and nicknames
There were also surnames that arose from Old Russian secular names. For example, from the Slavic proper names Zhdan and Lyubim, the surnames Zhdanov and Lyubimov later evolved. Many surnames are formed from so-called “protective” names: it was believed that if you give a baby a name with a negative connotation, it will scare him away dark forces and failures. So from the nicknames Nekras, Dur, Chertan, Zloba, Neustroy, Golod came the surnames Nekrasov, Durov, Chertanov, Zlobin, Neustroyev, Golodov.
Noble names
Only later, in the XIV-XV centuries, surnames began to appear among princes and boyars. Most often, they were formed from the name of the inheritance owned by a prince or boyar, and subsequently passed on to his descendants: Shuisky, Vorotynsky, Obolensky, Vyazemsky. Some part noble families comes from the nicknames: Gagarins, Humpbacked, Glazated, Lykovs, Scriabins. Sometimes the surname combined the name of the inheritance with a nickname, as, for example, Lobanov-Rostovsky. One of the most ancient noble families - Golitsyn - originates from old word"golitsy" ("galitsy"), meaning leather mittens used in various works. Another ancient noble family is Morozov. The first to wear it was Misha Prushanin, who especially distinguished himself in 1240 in the battle with the Swedes: his name was glorified in the Life of Alexander Nevsky. This family also became known thanks to the famous schismatic - boyar Fedosya Morozova.
Merchant names
In the 18th-19th centuries, service people, clergy and merchants began to bear surnames. However, the richest merchants acquired surnames even earlier, in XV-XVI centuries. These were mainly, again, residents of the northern regions of Russia - say, the Kalinnikovs, Stroganovs, Perminovs, Ryazantsevs. Kuzma Minin, the son of salt worker Mina Ankudinov from Balakhna, received his own surname at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. Merchant surnames often reflected the occupation of their owner. So, the Rybnikovs traded fish.
Peasant surnames
Peasants did not have surnames for a long time, with the exception of the population of the northern part of Russia, which once belonged to Novgorod, since there was no serfdom there. Take, for example, the “Arkhangelsk peasant” Mikhail Lomonosov or Pushkin’s nanny, the Novgorod peasant Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva.
They also had surnames of Cossacks, as well as the population of lands that were formerly part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the territory of present-day Belarus to Smolensk and Vyazma, Little Russia. Most of the indigenous inhabitants of the black earth provinces had surnames.
They began to assign surnames to peasants en masse only after the abolition of serfdom. And some even received surnames only during the years of Soviet power.
Surnames appeared quite late in Russia. In ancient times, before the advent of surnames, the Slavs had a personal name (they could have several names) and the name of the clan from which the person came (for example, Vinitarchus from the Oriya clan). But since the number of members of the clan has increased incredibly, it became necessary to introduce the concept of “Last Name”, which reflects which family of this clan a person belongs to. Most surnames come from given names (the baptismal or secular name of one of the ancestors), nicknames (based on the type of activity or some other characteristic of the ancestor) or family names. Much less often - from the names of the area (for example, Belozersky from Beloe Ozero). As a rule, Russian surnames were single and passed down only by male line.
Researchers have found that the vast majority of Russian surnames come from ancestry, that is, the name of the grandfather (or great-grandfather), thus securing the hereditary name in the third (fourth) generation. This made it easier to designate families of the same root, because usually each genus had its own most frequently used names. The children who were born were named in honor of their deceased grandfathers and great-grandfathers, in order to give them the opportunity to be born again (in case they did not complete all their work on this earth). But call born child the name of a living family member was not allowed, since it was believed that guardian legi (like the Greek guardian angels) would not be able to protect several family members with the same name at once.
History of the origin of Russian surnames
In various social strata, surnames appeared in different time. The first in the XIV-XV centuries. they appeared among princes and boyars. As a rule, they were given by the names of their patrimonial estates: Tverskoy, Zvenigorodsky, Vyazemsky. Among these families, many have eastern or western (Karamzin, Lermontov, Fonvizin) origin, due to the fact that many nobles came to serve the tsar from foreign countries. Methods of forming noble surnames (ancient surnames noble families and clans that served the nobility with ranks after the introduction of the Table of Ranks) were diverse. A small group consisted of the names of ancient princely families, which, as mentioned above, were derived from the names of their reigns.
A little later, surnames appeared among service people, including the Cossacks who transferred to the service of Tsarist Russia. As a rule, they came from worldly names (native Vedic, not Christian) - Kirpa, Duremka, Strikha, Sokur, Khribut, Rijaba, Trush; generic names – Lega, Bily; and nicknames - Shcherbina, Klochko, Polovinok, Lifeless, Naida, Zima, Us, Lezhebko.
IN mid-19th century, especially after the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the surnames of peasants were formed, and before that their function was performed by nicknames and patronymics. So for example in archival documents from that time you can find the following entries: “Ivan Mikitin’s son, and his nickname is Menshik,” entry from 1568; “Onton Mikiforov’s son, and nickname is Zhdan,” document from 1590; “Guba Mikiforov, son of Crooked Cheeks, landowner,” entry from 1495; “Danilo Soplya, peasant”, 1495; “Efimko Sparrow, peasant,” 1495.
In the XVII - first half XVIII centuries The peasants did not have hereditary surnames at all. The peasant family lived only for one life. For example, Procopius was born into the family of Ivan, and in all metric records he is called Procopius Ivanov. When Vasily was born to Procopius, the newborn became Vasily Prokopyev, and not Ivanov at all. And only from the middle of the nineteenth century did hereditary surnames of peasants begin to form:
- From the names of landowners. Some peasants were given the full or changed surname of their former owner, the landowner - this is how entire villages of the Polivanovs, Gagarins, Vorontsovs, and Lvovkins appeared.
- The roots of some surnames were the names of settlements. Mostly these are surnames ending in -tskiy, -skiy. Gorodetsky, Polotsk, Uluzhsky
- The majority of peasants had a “street” nickname written down in the document, which another family might have had more than one. Nicknames appeared much earlier than the general surnames that occurred after the abolition of serfdom. It was these nicknames that were included in the census forms first.
- For some, the patronymic was recorded as a surname.
The first census of 1897 showed that up to 75% of the population did not have a surname. This whole process was very complex and lengthy, often people continued to do without surnames, and for some they appeared only in the 30s of the 20th century during the era of passportization.
Under Peter the Great, by Senate Decree of June 18, 1719, in connection with the introduction of the poll tax and conscription, the earliest police registration documents for foreigners were officially introduced - travel documents, some prototypes of modern passports. The travel document contained information: name, surname, where he left from, where he was going, place of residence, description of his type of activity, information about family members who were traveling with him, sometimes information about his father and parents.
By decree of January 20, 1797, Emperor Paul I ordered the compilation of a General Arms Book of noble families, where more than 3,000 noble family names and coats of arms were collected. But the register of surnames in Russia is not limited to this number, so in order for all of us to restore a single ancestral connection with our ancestors, we definitely need to conduct research on the appearance of our family name.
An example of research into the appearance of the surname “Trush”
All my life I thought my surname “Trush” was not common enough. Having started collecting information on the history of the family name, I found out that the main geography of settlement of representatives of my family name was Ukraine (there was even the village of Trushka in the Kyiv Province), the south of Belarus, Kuban and the Volga. If so, does this mean that Old Slavic name“Trush,” which was the basis of the surname, was once very common in one of the Slavic clans, which, when forming surnames, settled precisely in these territories? Where was the original center of settlement of this genus and its name, its area of origin? And can we, based on data historical sources, find him? Until what century will we have to continue our genealogical search?
Gorbanevsky’s book lists 5 main ways of forming Russian surnames:
- Surnames formed from canonical and various folk forms baptismal Christian names.
- Surnames that retain worldly names at their core. Worldly names came from the Vedic times of our ancestors, when there was native faith and church names did not exist. After all, Christianity did not immediately captivate the minds, much less the souls, of the Slavs. Old traditions were preserved for a long time, the covenants of ancestors were revered sacredly. Every family remembered the names of their ancestors up to the 7th generation and even deeper. Legends from the history of the family were passed down from generation to generation. Instructive stories about the past deeds of their ancestors were told at night to the young successors of the family. Many of the worldly ones were proper names (Gorazd, Zhdan, Lyubim, Trush), others arose as nicknames, but then became names (Dur, Chertan, Neustroy).
- Surnames derived from the professional nicknames of their ancestors, telling which of them did what. Hence the Goncharovs, Ovsyannikovs, Cherepennikovs, Bondarchuks, Kovalis, etc.
- Surnames formed from the name of the area where one of the ancestors was from (the basis of such surnames was various geographical names - cities, villages, villages, rivers, lakes, etc.): Meshcheryakov, Semiluksky, Novgorodtsev, Moskvitinov, etc.
- A most interesting group Russian surnames- belonged to the Orthodox clergy: Apollonov, Gilyarovsky, Trinity, Rozhdestvensky.
Before the adoption of Christianity, the Slavs had names that called a person by some significant characteristic of him, external or internal, reflecting his belonging to a certain clan, the order of appearance of new family members and his relationship to them - Bel, Mal, Buyan, Molchan, Lyubim, Zhdan, Pervusha, Tretyak, etc.
The researcher of the process of formation of surnames, Tupikov, made a very interesting conclusion: secular (non-Christian) Russian names in the southwestern regions of Russia could be used independently (without mentioning the name given at baptism). Another interesting conclusion by Tupikov: “..in the 17th century. Russian names began to lose their meaning as personal names and began to pass from father to son, i.e. began to become family nicknames..."
From here we conclude that most likely before the seventeenth century “Trush” was a common name in one of the Slavic clans and this conclusion is confirmed by documents.
- Year 1490 Trush - voit (city head) of Lutsk (Ukraine). The year is 1563, Trush is mentioned in the city of Kremenets (Ukraine, near Lutsk). — materials taken from A. Bazhenova’s dictionary.
- “List from the scribe and boundary book of the city of Sviyazhsk. Letters from Dmitry Andreev, son of Kikin, and his comrades in the summer of November 7076 (1567): “In the village in Burundukov, poloneniks and newly baptized people live with the Chuvash and the Tatars, in the yard of Mitko, in the yard of Malaiko, in the yard of Mikhalko, in the yard of Rothko, a shoemaker, in In Ivanko’s yard there is a polonenik, in Belyayko’s yard Trusha is newly baptized...” (Volga)
- In the registry Cossack Army Zaporozhye from 1649 (Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky) two people with the name “Trush” are mentioned, these are Trush Moskal from the hundred of Jabotin and Trush Yaschenko from the hundred of Veremievskaya from across the Dnieper. (Ukraine) And in all these documents “Trush” is written as a name, but in documents dating back to the 18th century “Trush” is written as a person’s surname:
- Pivovar A.V. in his work “Settlements of Trans-Dnieper places in documents of the mid-18th century” he lists an apiary owned by Trokhim Trush (Ukraine).
- When settled by Zaporozhye Cossacks North Caucasus The Bryukhovetsky kuren arrived in Kuban, named after the Zaporozhye ataman - Ivan Martynovich Bryukhovetsky. When drawing lots for places for smoking in the winter of 1794, Ataman Bryukhovetsky got the territory at the mouth of the Beisuzhok River, near the so-called Great Kurgan. The Cossack Demko Trush is listed at number 184 in the kuren register.
That is, we see that the fact is confirmed that most Russian surnames come from grandfatherism, that is, the name of a grandfather (or great-grandfather), who, as we have established, was most likely a Zaporozhye Cossack. But let’s move on and see where the Zaporozhye Cossacks came from in Ukraine. Historical documents tell us the following: The Zaporozhye Cossacks are directly connected with the hero of the Battle of Kulikovo, Mamai. Mamai had two sons. One of them, Prince Mansur Kiyat, after the death of his father, continued to lead mixed detachments of Cherkasy Cossacks, Kiyat Cossacks, and descendants of other Slavic families who lived in the North Caucasus and part of the territory of the Chernihiv region and professed Rodnoverie (they revered their native Gods). This association in history is called the Sevruks and many historians call them the ancestors of the Zaporozhye Cossacks. Mansur Kiyat was the founder of three fortresses - Glinskaya, Glinishchevskaya and Poltava. Mansur’s son, Oleks (a very common Cossack name, is often mentioned in the register of the Zaporozhye army of Khmelnytsky and the register of the Kuban army) was forced to be baptized in Kyiv in 1390. Oleksa Mansurovich was named Alexander at baptism. At the same time, Mansur’s grandson, Alexa’s son, named Ivan, was also baptized. It was this Ivan Alexandrovich who in 1399 obtained for himself the title of Prince Glinsky from the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas. Grand Duke Vitovt married Prince Ivan Alexandrovich Glinsky to the Ostrog princess Nastasya Danilovna, but their grandson Ivan Mamai is considered the founder of the Zaporozhye Sich.
But who is Mamai himself? Noteworthy is the long-term and constant support provided to Mamai in the Crimea, Don and Kuban. He escaped there more than once after defeats in the Horde strife, and from there he reappeared with fresh strength. And the point was not only in the financial (and in 1380 - also in the military) assistance of the Genoese, but also in the fact that it was there that Mamai recruited the main, shock part of his troops. Even after huge losses on the Kulikovo field, he immediately recruited another army there and fought with Tokhtamysh, but the strength after the Kulikovo duel was no longer the same (and the ataman’s age was already adult grandchildren and great-grandsons) and he lost again. It is unlikely that such selected military contingents at that time could only be supplied by Crimea, where there was then neither the Crimean Khanate nor the Crimean Tatars in the form in which they became known in the next century. Apparently main role the former population of Ruskolani played here: hordes of Cherkasy Cossacks, Kiyat Cossacks, descendants of the Gothic Cumans and ancestors of the North Black Sea Russians, who roamed in the strip from the northern part of the Crimea and adjacent parts of Tavria and the Azov region, along the left bank of the Dnieper in the area of the rapids and further to the north to Vorskla.
For them, Mamai was not just an administrator sent from Sarai, but also their hereditary local prince, one of whose close ancestors was considered almost the direct successor of the pre-Horde rulers of these places (Ruskolani).
The text of the genealogy of the Glinsky princes: “And Mamai Tsar has a son Mansur-Kiyat, and Mansur-Kiyat Prince has children, two sons: Prince Alexa (Olexa is a very common name among the Cossacks), and the other Skidyr Prince. And after the Don Massacre, Mamaev’s son Mansur-Kiyat Prince hacked to death the three cities of Glinesk, Poldova (Poltava), and Glechenitsa (Glinitsa). The children of Mansur-Kiyatov, the youngest son Skider (Skidyr) Prince, captured a herd of horses and camels and migrated to Perekop, and his big son Alexa Prince, remained with those
grades of the previously spoken.
From the following phrase of the above quoted text it is clear that the heirs of Mansur divided themselves and divided the remnants of their army. And this division, as we will see below, occurred because of Faith. Some stayed with Alexa. Others went south with Skider because they did not want to change their native Vedic Faith and were, like Mamai, idolaters (that is, they revered the idols of their Gods). In "The Tale of Mamaev's massacre"(otherwise known as "Zadonshchina") it says: "By God's forgiveness for our sins, from the obsession of the devil, a prince will rise from the eastern country, named Mamai the Greek (as the Old Believers were called in our chronicles, or in another way - a pagan), by faith an idol-priest (that is, a worshiper of idols Gods) and an iconoclast, an evil Christian reproacher."
Further in the same place we see which Gods Mamai calls for help during his flight: “The godless King Mamai, seeing his death, began to call on his Gods Perun and Raklia and Khors.” God Perun is the patron of the Slavic princes, and God Khors (together with Kolyada) is the patron of the Cossacks. The horse was always presented surrounded by white dogs or wolves, which in the Cossack balachka are called horts. Also, the island of Khortitsa, the main base of the Cossacks, was named in honor of this God. And the fact that some of the Mamaevites went south with Skider is indirectly confirmed by the fact that much later, at the end of the 18th century, when Suvorov captured Kuban, many Kuban Cossacks, in order not to accept someone else’s Christian faith, were forced to emigrate to Turkey and among them there was a group that the Muscovites called "Mamaevites".
In the XVIII – 19th centuries In Ukrainian folk painting there was a characteristic plot: a Zaporozhye Cossack was depicted sitting cross-legged and playing the bandura. Poems were written under the painting, most often containing characteristics of the Zaporozhye Cossacks in general, often ironic, but always quite benevolent. Sometimes this Cossack was the only hero of the entire composition, in other cases other figures and entire scenes were added, but in all scenes he was certainly present, a Cossack bandura player in his stereotypical pose. Often the name of a Cossack was written. The names were different, but among them the most common was “Cossack Mamai,” and among the people, in general, all paintings of this type were known as portraits of “Cossack Mamai.” “Cossack Mamai” is generally known throughout Ukraine, but this picture was most widespread in the Chernihiv region, Poltava region and Kharkov region, that is, in the territory of which the Poltava region is the center.
And so we see that the Zaporozhye Cossacks moved to Ukraine from the territory of the North Caucasus. But what kind of Slavic families lived in these places in ancient times? The “Veles Book” gives us the answer to this:
“The Goths that remained after Galarekh left at midnight and disappeared there, and Deterich led them. Afterwards we know nothing about them. And the Berendeys came before us, and told us about a very great oppression from the Yags, who were following the trail of the Huns. And so that Beloyar told them to wait, and unexpectedly he came to them with 50,000 (warriors), and Yagov defeated them, who he scattered in all directions like blessed ones..... after all, the husband of Beloyar’s clan went to the other side of the Ra (Volga) river and warned the Sintsev there , coming from the Fryazhtsev, as the Huns on the islands will wait for the guests and rob them. It was 50 years from Aldoreh. And the ancient family of the Beloyars was strong..... Beloyar Krivorog was at that time the prince of Rushti (in the Veles book of the Russians, they are often called by the name “Rush” - Russian, in English our name is still written this way only, hence the name in this family T-rush, That's Russian). And he lets out a white dove. Wherever it flies, go there. And he flew to the Greeks. Krivorog attacked them and defeated them. Here the Greeks were wagging their tails like foxes. They gave Krivorg the golden fleece with a silver skate. And Krivorog held out on Surozhi (a city in the Crimea)..."
So everything fell into place, people from the ancient Slavic clan Rush roamed in these places, and the surname Trush only speaks of the belonging of modern descendants to this clan.
Explanation of the name Trush
- In the “Book of Veles”, written by Slavic priests in the 9th century, Russians are called by the generic name “RUSH”. Also in the 10th century the name “Rushav” was mentioned among the southern Slavs, in the 11th century the name “Rush” was mentioned in Bohemia and Moravia, in the 13th century Rushkovichev was the Prince of Lithuania. It follows that “Trush” simply means – To Russian, descendant of Rush.
- If we read this name from the Glagolitic alphabet or from the Slovenian Initial Letter using figurative meanings, we get: T - firmly, approved by the gods, unshakable; R - speeches, wisdom arising from the world of the Rules that we speak. That is, what they received from above, they said. U - uk, (uok) connection of the heavenly and earthly, connection on the verge of contacts. Ш - The breadth of the aces, their wisdom, three channels of forces (soul, spirit, conscience), that is, the connection of man with heaven, the divine level. It follows that Trush is the one who must have a connection on the verge of contact with heaven and firmly convey to people the wisdom received from the gods (numerical value of the name = 800).
- If we read this name from the runes using figurative meanings, we get: T - approved by the gods Ru - an active influencing principle, both destructive and creative, bringing divine forces into action Ш - Divine forces of life.
That is, Trush is a person who must firmly and actively influence life with the help of divine powers.
Now let's put it all together and get more full meaning ancient family name.
Trush is a person belonging to a Russian clan-tribe who is capable of: 1) establishing a connection with the forces of the three worlds (Revelation, Navi and Pravi) on the verge of contact; 2) firmly convey to people, without distortion, the wisdom received from the gods; 3) firmly and actively influence life with the help of divine powers (but we must not forget that all these are potential possibilities that still need to be realized).
Some famous representatives surnames Trush who managed to realize, to one degree or another, their potential inherent in the name Rod:
- Ivan Ivanovich Trush, born in 1869, is a Ukrainian painter, paintings (“Hutsul woman with a child”), portraits (I. Franko), lyrical landscapes. A monument to him was erected in Lviv.
- Famous genealogist late XIX century K. A. Trush
- Vladimir Yakovlevich Trush (1869 -193...). “one of the decisive and undaunted fighters and pioneers in the cause of the complete inclusion of Galician Rus' in the all-Russian culture”, he “turned out after the war to be one of the first awakeners of the fallen, it was, folk spirit in the region." In 1923, the Russian School society was founded in Lvov, the founding member of which was the same V.Ya. Trush...
This material has been prepared in order to, through the study of surnames, encourage those living today to restore the broken connection with their ancient families. Therefore, I wish everyone good luck on this path.
Origin Slavic surnames.
History of Slavic surnames covers more than one century and combines their similarities and features characteristic of all Slavic cultures. In almost all Slavic lands, hereditary names began to be formed in the 14th-15th centuries among landowners, when the need arose to consolidate the hereditary right to property.
Educational features of Slavic surnames.
Usually meaning such Slavic surnames was associated with any geographical names. Here, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian surnames were strongly influenced by Polish generic names with the ending -sky, -tsky - Verbrzhitsky (Polish), Steblivsky (Ukrainian), Vyazemsky (Russian), Belsky (Belarusian).
Perhaps in dictionary of Slavic surnames endings -ov, -ev, -in can be considered just as common, which in to a greater extent characteristic of the Russian language. They are found in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Czech, Bulgarian surnames. True, male Czech surnames usually have no endings, but in the female version such hereditary names end in -ova - Novak-Novakova, Špork-Šporkova. Many Bulgarian surnames are formed in this way - Mitkov, Panchev, Tikhov. Among the southern Slavs, surnames in -ich are common - Vutečić (Serbian), Babich (Serbian), Lalich (Khovatian), Kreshemirovich (Croatian).
Of course there is a large number of ways of forming Slavic surnames, differing national characteristics. In russian language Declension of Slavic surnames obeys the laws of Russian grammar. For example, male surnames those ending in a consonant are declined, but feminine ones are not. Surnames in -skiy and -skaya change according to cases in both genders like adjectives.
Meanings of Slavic surnames.
If you study list of Slavic surnames in alphabetical order, then you can see that they have a lot in common in semantic meaning. In all languages, some surnames were formed from personal names (Nikolich, Sidorov, Lukash, Petrenko, Aleshkovsky). Interpretation most of Slavic surnames associated with a person’s profession, his nickname, the names of plants and objects. So, perhaps the first carrier Polish surname Dzenzelyuk had the nickname “woodpecker”, the Czech Sklenarz was a stacker, the Ukrainian Koval was a blacksmith. The Polish-Belarusian surname Golodyuk is derived from the word “hunger,” the Ukrainian surname Kvitun corresponds to the Russian surname Kvitunov, and both of them come from the verb “get even,” that is, “to take revenge for an insult, to pay a debt.” The Poles have a similar surname, Kvitash.
Even this brief analysis shows how much Slavic surnames have in common, despite all their diversity. A top Slavic Slavic surnames will show which ones are the most common and popular in their countries.