When speaking of Russian names, modern people most often mean Ivan, Maria, Vasily, etc. In fact, these names are Greek. But the primordial Slavic names after the baptism of Russia almost did not survive in everyday life, with the exception of a few of the most common. The echoes of the rest are found only in a number of surnames.
Instructions
Step 1
Researchers divide all ancient Slavic names into several groups. These are dibasic (created by merging two words, for example, Radimir, Bratislav, Yaropolk), associated with human qualities (Bezson, Brave), data on the names of animals and plants (Borsch, Wolf) or the order of the appearance of children in the family (Pervak, Vtorusha) … The negative names that were designed to protect a person from evil spells are especially distinguished: Malice, Nekras, Fornication. It is interesting that the name Vadim existed as a negative one in Russia. Its meaning is a disputant, a sower of confusion and discord. In addition, some of the names even in the pre-Christian era were borrowed by the Slavs from the Varangians: Gleb, Oleg, Igor and others.
Step 2
After the eradication of paganism, some Slavic names that the canonized saints bore were included in the calendar. Among them are Boris (scientists still argue about his origin) and Vladimir. Also, the Christianization of Russia made it possible to transfer Greek names to Russian soil, for example, Vera, Nadezhda and Lyubov, by the method of tracing paper. Formally, they also have Slavic roots.
Step 3
In recent decades, rare names have been in vogue in Russia. Parents choose not only foreign ones, but also those worn by their ancestors many centuries ago. However, poor knowledge of such a narrow question of history led to the fact that the former short variants began to be used as full names. Among them, Dobrynya is an affectionate contraction from Dobroslav or Dobrogost. Most likely, this was influenced by the existence among the Slavs of the names Gorynya and Dubynya, which means similar to a mountain or an oak.
Step 4
A funny story about the modern name of Yaroslavna. So they began to call girls around the 70-80s of the last century. Although it would be more correct to give them the name of Yaroslav, because Yaroslavna is a middle name. In Russia, women were often called not by their own name, but by the name of their husband or father. Those who did not know about this fact believed that the famous lament from "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" was pronounced by a girl named Yaroslavna. So this name also has Slavic roots, albeit peculiar.
Step 5
Even more curious is the process of the appearance of the name Svetlana in Russia. Many consider it to be primordially Slavic. After all, it is so similar to the ancient Svetislava, Svetlozara, Svetovid. However, the name was invented in 1802 for his story by the writer Alexander Vostokov, and then Svetlana named the main character of the ballad Vasily Zhukovsky. The name turned from a literary to an everyday one very slowly, until 1917 it was mainly assigned to ships, factories or some women's goods. However, already in the middle of the 20th century, even the church recognized the name, albeit without reference to the saint.
