Why is Marat Safin's sister's last name Safina?

September 6, 2006 10:36 AM

Why is Marat Safin's sister's last name Safina? I know they are Russian but adding an 'A' to a daughter's last name is not a Russian tradition that I know of, anyone?
posted by Cosine to society & culture (8 comments total)

Yes it is.
posted by robinpME at 10:52 AM on September 6, 2006

That's how it's done in Russian. Women carry the feminine form of the last name.

For example, Mikhail Gorbachev's wife is Raisa Gorbachyova.

The rule applies to most (perhaps all) Russian last names.
posted by yevge at 10:53 AM on September 6, 2006

And here.
posted by robinpME at 10:53 AM on September 6, 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_names

"Most Russian surnames have different forms depending on gender—for example, the wife of Борис Ельцин (Boris Yel'tsin) is Наина Ельцина (Naina Yel'tsina). Note that this change of grammatical gender is a characteristic of East Slavic languages, and is not considered to be changing the name received from a woman's father or husband (compare the equivalent rule in Czech). The correct transliteration of such feminine names in English is debated: sometimes women's names are given in their original form, sometimes in the masculine form (technically incorrect, but more widely recognized)."
posted by mattbucher at 10:54 AM on September 6, 2006

Nabokov famously preferred using the masculine form in English (insisting on "Anna Karenin," for example), but I find this ridiculous, and I challenge anyone who prefers it to be consistent and talk about Martina Navratil as well. (Czech is even more hard-core about the feminine suffix than Russian, by the way; in Prague you see movie posters featuring the likes of Meryl Streepová.)

For example, Mikhail Gorbachev's wife is Raisa Gorbachyova.

That's a weird way to put it. Either "Mikhail Gorbachev's wife is Raisa Gorbacheva" or "Mikhail Gorbachyov's wife is Raisa Gorbachyova"; mix-and-match doesn't really work.
posted by languagehat at 11:54 AM on September 6, 2006

Nabokov was famously ridiculous.
posted by sweetkid at 12:32 PM on September 6, 2006

Nabokov famously preferred using the masculine form in English (insisting on "Anna Karenin," for example), but I find this ridiculous, and I challenge anyone who prefers it to be consistent and talk about Martina Navratil as well.

Well, for what it's worth, my Russian girlfriend (who came to the U.S. at the age of 11 or so) uses the masculine form in the States, and the feminine form back in Russia. I don't think she follows tennis, though.
posted by Johnny Assay at 1:11 PM on September 6, 2006

Similarly, when sending cards to my daughter, she is Anna Zacharzewska for all our Polish relatives, and Anna Zacharzewski for the English ones.
posted by athenian at 2:21 PM on September 6, 2006