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Hi, everyone! So I just got back from a week in beautiful RUSSIA. I can't wait to go back. It's the most amazing place I've ever been. My family is mostly from Russia (way back when), so it was sort of a homecoming, in a way. I didn't expect it to feel that way, but it just hit home for me in a way that even the U.S. doesn't.

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Anyway, I was thinking a lot about names that overlap between Russian and English. For example, Victoria / Viktoriya / Виктория. Any name that is basically the same in English as it is in Russian, or has a direct translation, or simply makes sense in English (no difficult transliteration). I'd like to find some combos that include one or two of those names. I'm not sure how I feel about including non-Russian names in those combos, for instance, Mariya Brooke or Anna Felicity. Thoughts? Or would you combine them with other Russian names?

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Opinions on the following would be much appreciated:

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Anna (AH-na) "Anya"
Alla
Aleksandra "Sasha"
Andrei
Dmitri / Dimitri
Dominika (dom-i-NEE-ka) "Nika"
Ekaterina "Katya" or "Katie"
Elizaveta "Liza" (LEE-za)
Ivan (ee-VAHN) "Vanya"
Irina (ee-REE-na)
Karina
Kira
Klara
Larisa "Lara"
Lev
Lidiya / Lydia
Liliya
Maksim "Maks"
Margarita "Rita"
Marina
Mariya "Masha"
Mikhail "Misha"
Nataliya "Natasha"
Nikolai "Kolya"
Nikita (m)
Olga "Olya"
Roksana
Sergei
Sofiya "Sonya"
Tatiana "Tanya"
Tamara
Valentina
Veronika "Nika"
Viktoriya / Victoria "Vika"
Vladimir (vla-DEE-meer) "Volodya" or "Vova"
Yakov "Yasha"
Yulia / Yuliya
Yuliana / Yulianna
Zoya