Monday, January 14, 2008

Russian Names

I have been thinking. I keep trying to guess what the name of our little guy will be. Misha, Sasha, Ivan, Artom, Danil, Dimas..... it is so fun going through the list of Russian names.

This time around, we are open to changing his name because he will be so young, but I don't know if we even want to. We certainly don't have a name picked out for him ahead of time. I guess if his name was one that I didn't like, well then maybe, but I can't even think of a name that I wouldn't care for. Oh well, it's kind of early to be worrying about the name game anyways.

But, out of curiosity, what is or was the name of your child when you first met him or her?

23 comments:

Connie said...

Naming our kids was one of the hardest things we've had to do as parents! I never thought it would be until actually faced with the task, and then, oh my! It really became IMPORTANT! ;-D ok, I can laugh now, but it was stressful!

So, are you writing out lists and lists of first names, middle names, first and last name, first and middle names and last name?? Are the kids?!?! I think I would be - even if we wouldn't change the name.. I think I would have to go through that process, just as I did with Brian and Honor!

Sarah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Troy and Rachel said...

That's so funny because I keep wondering what our son's given name will be. Since we do plan to change it, I can't help but wonder if it will be something close or something I've never heard before!

Shelley said...

Our son's given name was Naum. It's Russian and also Hebrew(his parents were Jewish). The staff at the orphanage actually pronounced it "Nome" and they all called him "Nome-chick".

Anonymous said...

I love Russian names. They are just beautiful!

As for the name of our daughter-to-be, we are keeping that a secret. Everyone knows we are adopting a girl so we are trying to keep some element of surprise. :o)

junglemama said...

Shelley, Nome-chick is so cute. :) I can totally picture your son being called this.

Jeri said...

Anton Mikhailovich (son of Michael)
He was called Antoshka (I guess Little Anton?)

was changed to Alexander Goodman (my maiden name)

We called him Anton-Alexander, then Anton- Alex then Alex. Christine, could you add From Sumy with Love to your blog list on the sidebar? It is http://fromsumywithlove.blogspot.com/ Thank you

Matt and Carla Morgan said...

Our son's Russian name is Nikolai Olegovitch. We've Americanized it to Nicholas Matthew. His nicknames are Kolya and Nikolinchka - both of which we love!

cm

Lucky Mom said...

My two boys Russian names were Konstantin and Danil. I loved them so much I kept them as middle names.

Debora Hoffmann said...

I love to think about names and make lists. Many of them fall by the wayside when I run them past Garth, though! I always wanted to name our children with names that have special meanings. And I love Russian names, too...so I guess we'll see who God decides to give us and then take the naming from there!

The RockStar said...

Micah was Misha ... although we asked him what he wanted to be called when we went to pick him up and he told us he would rather be called po - pa (phonetically as I do not know how to spell it). It sounded funny to me ... so I went with it.

This basically translates as rear end. I wish I knew that before I took him all over Moscow calling him Popa while every one just stared at me.

Nothing like being the foreigner who calls his adopted son a rear end all over Red Square ... we are lucky they let me out alive :-)

Brandi said...

Ok, we adopted from Africa. . so, our son's name was Henry Davis (I know it sounds very American b/c his heritage was from freed slaves) and we are changing it to Gregory (his new daddy) Davis and we're calling him Davis. . .such a hard decision! Ours was easy b/c as soon as I saw the name of the jpeg for the picture I just knew!

Brandi

Nancy said...

It's fun to think about names!
Our son was called "Alyosha" in the baby home. It's a nick-name for Alexey. He has never been called Alexey and didn't recognize it. We changed his name to Nathaniel, which means "Gift from God". :)

CA Momma said...

My son's name was Igor. Igor. My whole family freaked. We wanted to keep our son's Russian name but we were chickens so we changed it to something close- Ian.

I still call him Igor sometimes though and he loves it. He tells people that is his Russian name.

junglemama said...

Brian, too funny! I know what your referring to. Zhoppa is the exact word you are looking for. :) That must have been strange to the Russians.

Shelby said...

Thank you for your nice comment on my blog.
My daughter from Guatemala was Nanci and my son who was a domestic adoption was Jeremiah.

Kim said...

Noah's Russian name was Evgenii and Josh's Kazakh name was Torekhan.

Tami said...

When we adopted Q-ball his name was so foreign that we felt like we had to change it. Then we we brought home Punky and JacJac we didn't feel like we could keep their names without someday hearing about it from Q-ball...so we made the decision right then and there to change them all...regardless.
Sooo...
Q-ball was Bogdan Olegovitch
Punky was Deana Nikolaevna
JacJac was Evgenij Nikolaevitch
Maddie is Anastacyia Sergaevna
I kind of wish we would have kept Maddie's first name as a middle name, but with her real name it just becomes a mouthfull...make sense?! ;)

Annie said...

Our foster son was originally adopted by another family who changed his name. He resented it mightily and associates it with the fact that his paperwork was all wrong and has him two years older than he really is. (He still blames his original family for that, even though all they really did was change his name.) However, he felt that for all intents and purposes his whole identity was removed from him. Plus; they did not encourage any "Russian" ties. He didn't realize it would be, not only OK with me but that we would have encouraged him to revert, so when he came to us he kept that first name, and now he is shy about changing it at school. However it was noteworthy to me that when our new son arrived, he told him his name was "Maxim" - his original name. That has made it easier for the rest of us in the family to switch over. He's also reverted to his Russian last name for "real life" purposes, since I thought it was cruel to force him to use the name of the people who rejected him. Of course he did not come as a baby, and I think that makes all the difference.

junglemama said...

Wow! There are alot of neat names here. I think the only one I am not personally really crazy about is Igor. Now watch. That will probably be the name of our new son. Wouldn't that be funny?

adoptedthree said...

We had decided to keep or name our son a russian name because we liked the way they sounded and I came from a family of totally different names. My name has Russian roots as well (Leanna or Liana)

The name we had chosen for our DS#1 was Nikolai Allen (only if his Russian name was too odd).

His name was Vitaly (of life) Sergeivich
Liked it and kept his name and changed his middle to Allen (Dh's middle name)

When we were lucky enough to adopt again we met Konstatine (kostya)Alexandervich. A little too odd so bingo the Nikolai name. So he was Nikolai (victory of the people) Alexander.

Oksana we had tought of changing and naming her after our facilitator Masha, but after polling the masses at home we kept her name (it means Praise be to God )

I love the Russian boy and girl names!!

Maggie said...

I've kept my son's first name but we decided together to change his middle name.

The kiddo I tried to adopt from Russia was Vladimir. I intended to keep Vladimir, but to phase out his Russian nickname "Vova." The way he pronounced it, it sounded like a part of the female anatomy.

junglemama said...

Maggie, Too funny. I totally agree with you on the name sounding too much like a part of the female anatomy.