View Message

I posted recently about Olga. I am in a Russian name phase lately because at this festival there was a group of 5 Russian speakers and I was bowled over by awesome the entire time.

---

(Their names were: Ilya, Olga, Andrey, Tatiana, and Bayr. Bayr is pronounced "By Ear" with a Russian accent. He said it was some sort of tribal name? or something? and that he was half Mongolian? or something? and he had gotten made fun of a lot in school for being half mongolian with a crazy name. I like all of their names anyway.)

---

Ilya is the Russian form of Elijah. Think Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It is not a girl name actually. He pronounced it "Ill-ya" as in "Killya" or "Willya." The way that that pronunciation makes the tongue go makes it so it is often rendered three syllables. (This is the way I say a lot of -ia names. I think "-ya" and pronounce "almost i a." Julya, Cecilia, etc.)

---

Anyway I think it is a great name and almost every time I talked to him I would be thinking "ILYA AWWW ILYA" because I think it is an incredibly cute name / word / phonetic entity.

---

The pet form is Ilyusha but he did not use it and I only used it twice. BUT ISNT IT CUTE AWWW

---

His middle name is Felixovich

---

So anyway I have been thinking about some more Russian names because I went through a phase with them a while back.

---

Mikhail I don't like that much but I love Misha
Maria I love Mashka for
Gavril I think is my favorite, and I love the nickname Ganya
Dmitry I love, and Mitya and Dima
Aleksandr nn Sasha
Alexei is growing on me, will someone sell me on it?
Anastasia I have always liked but sometimes feel it is a bit too cliche-exotic
Lev I love
Ivan and Vanya I have long loved
Modest I am absolutely crazy about, despite how silly it is
Yaromir
Agafya
A couple random ones like Afanasiy

---

I know Russian name discussions pop up every so often on here but I am still curious about whether you guys can "feel" Russian names and if so which ones you like