Ivan-Dzhamshud and Marie Antoinette: Russian parents fell in love with “multi-story” names

“At night the extra name will be taken away by evil spirits”

Russians began to give newborns double, triple and even quadruple names – this trend was reported by the registry office during the traditional annual ranking of the most popular names among new parents. But will the grown-up Hasan-Abdurrahman-ibn-Khottab, named so by his entertaining father in honor of the almighty fairy-tale genie, say thank you when he finds himself in a children’s group? And how will they call Sofia-Augusta-Frederica, who went to 1st grade, to the board, whom her ambitious mother royally bestowed with the real name of Catherine the Great?

According to statistics from the registry office, most often “multi-story” names are given to babies in Moscow.

“Before, they also gave double names, but less often,” says an employee at the issuance of birth certificates at one of the capital’s registry offices. – And the names themselves were simpler – for example, Anna-Maria or Marie-Louise. And now straight into five floors of names! Well, it’s okay, they will grow and change.

The Mother See, according to the registry office, was also replenished with Adeline-Victoria, Alice-Olivia, Anastasia-Alexandra-Annabella, Mia-Nadezhda-Nancy and Alexandra-Flor de Maria. And among the male Muscovites there appeared Savely-Svyatoslav, Adrien-Jules-Michel and Alexander-Michel-Boris.

“I immediately remember the joke of how a Spaniard at a resort knocks on a Swede’s door at night,” onomast psychologist Margarita Tressel assesses the new trend in anthroponymics (a part of the science of onomastics that studies people’s names). – Swedish woman: “Who’s there?” From behind the door: “Juan Carlos Miguel Emanuel da Silva!” Swedish woman: “Come in, only one at a time.” Jokes aside, such names primarily speak of the vanity of the parents. They think that the “four-story” name sounds aristocratic. But in everyday life, the same Elizabeth-Alexandra-Mary will be called Lizka, Sashka or Mashka. I feel even more sorry for the first-born of a couple of migrants from Central Asia who gave birth in Moscow and decided to pay tribute to both their people and the Russians in the name of their son. This is wonderful, but what is it like for a boy to be Ivan-Dzhamshud?! But a boy’s double name also means a double patronymic for his children. Someone will be Ivandzhamshudovich.

According to anthroponymy experts, the influence of a name on a person’s fate is not “old wives’ tales,” but a scientific theory about the influence on the brain of both phonetics (the sound of a name) and its social prototype (how many people around have a similar name and how they express themselves) .

“If a child’s name is, say, a star who is always in sight and ear, or a prominent public figure, he will unconsciously associate himself with him,” Margarita Tressel gives an example. – Having a name that is too common, the child will feel like a “cog” of a large team with a single name – and vice versa. Although the prevalence of the name in the social cross-section today is an extremely unstable phenomenon. For example, 25 years ago, grandmothers did not advise their daughters to call their granddaughters the “serf name” Arina – for the generation born in the 40-50s of the last century, the name Arina was too “common”; at that time it was called that in the villages. And recently there was a revealing scene: a five-year-old girl, returning from kindergarten, tells how her day went, and suddenly forgets the name of their nanny. And she says to her parents: “Oh, I forgot, such a simple name, that’s what everyone calls nanny!” The family went through all the variations on the “MaryIvanna” theme, but finally the girl herself remembered that the nanny’s name was Zemfira Dzhamilievna…

The laws of the Russian Federation do not prevent the registration of a baby under as many names as his parents wish. Moscow is the leader in fantasies on the theme of the name: in recent years, Venus-Veronica, Alexander-North, Leo-Moses, Ludwig-Alexander, Rachel-Tatyana, Alisa-Vasilisa, Daisy-Anastasia, Linda-Maria, Martin-Pavel, Vera-Elizabeth, Love-Maria, Milana-Nadezhda and others like them. But the very first to take advantage of the kindness of domestic registry offices was the domestic showbiz, back in the early 2000s. In 2002, Nikita Dzhigurda named his newborn heir Artemy-Dobrovlad, and then Sofia-Bettina was born into the family of TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov. Both families did not stop there: Solovyov soon gave birth to Emma-Esther, and in the family of Nikita Dzhigurda and Marina Anisina – Ilya-Maximilian, Mick-Angel-Christ and Eva-Vlad Dzhigurda. And soon Alla-Victoria and Martin-Kristin Kirkorov joined them. Tanya Tereshina, ex-soloist of the Hi-Fi group. She named her son Arseniy-Ostap, sports TV presenter Victoria Lopyreva has a son Mark-Lionel (in honor of the famous football player Lionel Messi). The singer Suzanna has a daughter, Evangelina-Sofia, and Danila Kozlovsky and Olga Zueva have a daughter, Oda-Valentina.