Baptismal and generic names of Russians. What's the Difference ?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In ancient times, each person at birth received a hereditary name, testifying to his family affiliation and indicating a common ancestor, from which the family branches went.

This generic name was part of the full naming, the chain of which sometimes reached a dozen names, since in the old days the history of grandfathers was carefully passed from generation to generation and they remembered their names up to the seventh generation.

The most elementary and archaic generic name was considered a patronymic, which over time was supplemented by a surname derived from the name or nickname of the most famous representative of the pedigree.

Peasants and princes

The generic names of the peasant social group arose from the names of relatives, place of residence, occupation of a person, his external data, and even from the living and weather conditions under which he was born.

A large layer of generic names originated from nicknames that were glued to all descendants of the family. So among the nobility of the 16th century, exotic pedigrees appeared: Mare, Cat, Shovel, Radish, Goat, Beast, Cow, Woodpecker, Cabbage, Grass.

The generic names of the princes had a more sacred meaning, in the pre-Christian era they were deified and endowed with supernatural protective functions, since it was believed that the spirit of the ancestor who bore this name became the invisible patron of the baby. It was believed that the male names included in the selected fund of the pagan generic namebook had a special energy and bore the imprint of the fate and character of the ancestor, which means that by calling the child one of these names, the parents, as it were, determined his fate.

Choosing a family name for the prince, the parents determined his place in the dynasty, updated the history of the genealogy and planted his future.

Naming the newborn with the name of a strong and respected ancestor in society, they, as it were, in absentia transferred the love of society to a new member of the clan, from whom people expected the same successful government as from the namesake.

Believing in reincarnation through a common dynastic name, the princes, according to pagan belief, never called their children the generic name of a living direct ancestor, that is, a son could not be named in honor of a living father or grandfather.

Baptismal names

After the adoption of Christianity by Russia in 988, generic pagan names, for example, Mstislav, Vsevolod, Izyaslav, Vladimir, Svyatopolk, Rostislav, Yaroslav, Yaropolk gradually began to be replaced by Christian or baptismal, mostly Greco-Byzantine names such as Ivan, Dmitry, Fedor, Vasily, Andrey.

Initially, the prince, in addition to the family name, was given a name that he received on the eighth day of his life, when the baptismal ceremony was performed. Usually the baby was named after the Christian saint, whose celebration fell on the date of birth of the baby. Until the 17th century, the baptismal name of the prince was often kept secret so that the evil spirits could not harm the child.

So each prince became the owner of two names at once: a pagan family name and a personal baptismal one, the first he used in public life, and the second he called out in the family. But after a generation, some descendant was called a baptismal name, it began to acquire authority, history and gradually passed into the category of a generic one.

The rapid spread of baptismal names is also due to the fact that when it was appropriated, there was no prohibition on repeating the names of living ancestors, that is, during the life of a father or grandfather, their names could go to a son or grandson.

Over time, pagan generic names were almost completely ousted from the dynastic namebook, giving way to baptismal names, from which the first Russian surnames began to form in the 16th century.

Generic names of Rurik

The host of family names of the Rurik dynasty was very limited, since not all elements of both pagan and Christian names were suitable for naming newborn descendants. For 600 years, representatives of the first Russian ruling clan tried not to consign to oblivion the names of their deceased ancestors and, with the help of conservative anthroponyms, legitimized the power. The Rurikids had their own stock of generic names, which could not be used by people who did not belong to their dynasty, since they had a direct link to the royal ancestor. For the most part, the generic names were given to newborns from deceased great-grandfathers, but the "late" Rurikovichs neglected this rule, which is why Ivan Kalita named one of his heirs Ivan, and this is not an isolated example.

Wishing to distinguish between children born of different wives, princes often resorted to a method of naming in which children from one spouse were given exclusively pagan names, and from the other baptismal names. This was done by Vladimir Monomakh, whose name has been included in the Christian namebook since the 13th century.

Generic names of the Romanovs

The generic names of the Romanov dynasty can be conditionally divided into “pre-Petrine” and “post-Petrine”, the use of which at the first stage of its 300-year reign was supposed to show the continuity of power from the Rurikids, and later demonstrate its independence.

When naming a child, the Romanovs very rarely resorted to the calendar, preferring to call him the most beneficial name for dynastic reasons.

The emperors, with all their favor for the cult of ancestors, deleted from the namebook the anthroponym of the unlucky or tragic historical ancestor, which is why, after the death of Peter III and Paul I, their names practically disappeared from the dynastic horizon of the Romanovs.

A significant renewal of the generic names of the imperial family took place during the reign of Catherine the Great.

A common feature of the Romanovs' house was the custom to call sons by the same names and in the same sequence as their fathers. So in the genealogical tree of the imperial family after Nicholas I, a situation arose when in four branches of the clan for three generations there were lines of three identical names: Alexander, Constantine, Nikolai and Mikhail.