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ArchivesRe: Russian origin for Yesenia?
in reply to a message by clevelandkentevans
According to the Russian Wikipedia, the Cyrillic spelling of the poet's surname is Есенин:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%95%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD,_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (in Russian)
This indicates that the Cyrillic spelling of Yesenia is Есения, of which the proper transcription is actually Yeseniya.
A Russian name website gives 5 possible meanings and origins for Есения, which includes the poet's surname as well as the genus of South American palm trees (as mentioned in BtN's entry for Yesenia). In the case of the latter, the website mentions that the name became very popular in 1970 because of the series (yes, it specifically says 'series' and not 'film'). You can see it for yourself here:
https://imya.com/name/6891 (in Russian; use Google Translate if necessary)
The same website does not have an entry for Есенин (Yesenin), the poet's surname. If Yesenin was ever used as a given name for Russian boys, then it must have been extremely rare (like most Soviet given names). It might be mentioned in Herwig Kraus' book Sowjetrussische Vornamen: Ein Lexikon (2013) under the germanised spelling Jessenin, but the relevant page is not available for free on Google Books:
https://books.google.de/books?id=3tXmBQAAQBAJ (in English and German)
With that said: it does indeed look like the given name Yeseniya first came into use in the 20th century, as the name is not mentioned on Paul Wickenden's website A Dictionary of Period Russian Names:
https://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/ (in English)
Lastly, even when you use the Cyrillic spelling, it is probably going to be quite hard to find bearers older than 50 on social media like Facebook and its Russian equivalent VKontakte, since the name must have been rare before 1970/1. It is possible that most (if not all) of the few bearers who were born *before* that year are either deceased or too elderly and computer illiterate to be on social media (or perhaps even too poor to be able to afford Internet; remember that poverty is still very much a thing in Russia).
~ If so is it possible that the Russian name actually influenced the use of the name in Latin America?
Since the name was probably rare in Russia even in the Soviet era, I highly doubt it. How would a Soviet Russian name even become popular in Latin America? For example: it doesn't seem like there was a hugely popular Russian film with that name, in the same way that the Mexican film was hugely popular in the Soviet Union and popularised the name Yesenia/Yeseniya.
~ Or did some residents of the old Soviet Union just wrongly assume that the name of the character in the Mexican film was derived from the name of the poet?
If the film was dubbed instead of subtitled when it was first released in the Soviet Union, and most of the character's names were russified to boot, then some people might possibly have made that mistake. But since Yeseniya as a feminine form of Yesenin was probably rare before the film's release, the number of people to even connect the name to the poet like that must have been small. It looks like the name primarily became popular because of the Mexican film's titular character, and not because of a coincidental similarity to the surname of a once-popular Russian poet, who at the time had already been dead for 46 years.
Forchta in biuonga quamon ouer mi, in bethecoda mi thuisternussi.
In ic quad: "uuie sal geuan mi fetheron also duuon, in ic fliugon sal in raston sal?"
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%95%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD,_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (in Russian)
This indicates that the Cyrillic spelling of Yesenia is Есения, of which the proper transcription is actually Yeseniya.
A Russian name website gives 5 possible meanings and origins for Есения, which includes the poet's surname as well as the genus of South American palm trees (as mentioned in BtN's entry for Yesenia). In the case of the latter, the website mentions that the name became very popular in 1970 because of the series (yes, it specifically says 'series' and not 'film'). You can see it for yourself here:
https://imya.com/name/6891 (in Russian; use Google Translate if necessary)
The same website does not have an entry for Есенин (Yesenin), the poet's surname. If Yesenin was ever used as a given name for Russian boys, then it must have been extremely rare (like most Soviet given names). It might be mentioned in Herwig Kraus' book Sowjetrussische Vornamen: Ein Lexikon (2013) under the germanised spelling Jessenin, but the relevant page is not available for free on Google Books:
https://books.google.de/books?id=3tXmBQAAQBAJ (in English and German)
With that said: it does indeed look like the given name Yeseniya first came into use in the 20th century, as the name is not mentioned on Paul Wickenden's website A Dictionary of Period Russian Names:
https://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/ (in English)
Lastly, even when you use the Cyrillic spelling, it is probably going to be quite hard to find bearers older than 50 on social media like Facebook and its Russian equivalent VKontakte, since the name must have been rare before 1970/1. It is possible that most (if not all) of the few bearers who were born *before* that year are either deceased or too elderly and computer illiterate to be on social media (or perhaps even too poor to be able to afford Internet; remember that poverty is still very much a thing in Russia).
~ If so is it possible that the Russian name actually influenced the use of the name in Latin America?
Since the name was probably rare in Russia even in the Soviet era, I highly doubt it. How would a Soviet Russian name even become popular in Latin America? For example: it doesn't seem like there was a hugely popular Russian film with that name, in the same way that the Mexican film was hugely popular in the Soviet Union and popularised the name Yesenia/Yeseniya.
~ Or did some residents of the old Soviet Union just wrongly assume that the name of the character in the Mexican film was derived from the name of the poet?
If the film was dubbed instead of subtitled when it was first released in the Soviet Union, and most of the character's names were russified to boot, then some people might possibly have made that mistake. But since Yeseniya as a feminine form of Yesenin was probably rare before the film's release, the number of people to even connect the name to the poet like that must have been small. It looks like the name primarily became popular because of the Mexican film's titular character, and not because of a coincidental similarity to the surname of a once-popular Russian poet, who at the time had already been dead for 46 years.
In ic quad: "uuie sal geuan mi fetheron also duuon, in ic fliugon sal in raston sal?"
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Replies
Thanks very much for your response and the time you took to look this up!
Since the name was probably rare in Russia even in the Soviet era, I highly doubt it. How would a Soviet Russian name even become popular in Latin America? For example: it doesn't seem like there was a hugely popular Russian film with that name, in the same way that the Mexican film was hugely popular in the Soviet Union and popularised the name Yesenia/Yeseniya.
My theory of this would have to do with why Yolanda Vargas Dulche chose the name for the character. In her famous story, Yesenia is a gypsy girl.
There certainly were connections between Russia and Mexico back in the 1940s when Vargas Dulche began her career. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was living in Mexico City when he was assassinated, after all. People involved in the arts like Vargas Dulche have usually been more attracted to both foreign influences and left-leaning politics than the average person.
It just seems more likely to me that Vargas Dulche would have thought Yesenia was a good name for a gypsy girl if she had run across it as an exotic Russian name than taking it from a genus of palm trees.
Of course we will never know unless someone runs across a statement from Yolanda Vargas Dulche explaining why she chose the name for her character.
Since the name was probably rare in Russia even in the Soviet era, I highly doubt it. How would a Soviet Russian name even become popular in Latin America? For example: it doesn't seem like there was a hugely popular Russian film with that name, in the same way that the Mexican film was hugely popular in the Soviet Union and popularised the name Yesenia/Yeseniya.
My theory of this would have to do with why Yolanda Vargas Dulche chose the name for the character. In her famous story, Yesenia is a gypsy girl.
There certainly were connections between Russia and Mexico back in the 1940s when Vargas Dulche began her career. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was living in Mexico City when he was assassinated, after all. People involved in the arts like Vargas Dulche have usually been more attracted to both foreign influences and left-leaning politics than the average person.
It just seems more likely to me that Vargas Dulche would have thought Yesenia was a good name for a gypsy girl if she had run across it as an exotic Russian name than taking it from a genus of palm trees.
Of course we will never know unless someone runs across a statement from Yolanda Vargas Dulche explaining why she chose the name for her character.
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You'd also need to find out where Karsten got the Genus name. Unlike the earlier and thus current name Oenocarpus, Jessenia has no Graeco-Latin meaning - it would seem to have been chosen in honor of someone known to Karsten. Besides, these palms have common names throughout Latin America - they seem not to be known as Jessenia except in certain scientific literature.
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Well Karl Jessen was a well-known botanist, too, and he has the official shorthand Jess. in botanical names, therefore he wasn't just an acquaintance of H. Karsten. But the major argument is still true: The palm have trivial names, but none of them is known popularly as "Jessenia" or "Yessenia". So probably the name was just made up by Yolanda Vargas Dulche maybe inspired by botany, I don't know the graphic novel nor any statements of the author where she got the name from.
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the Danish surname Jessen is probably the origin, although there's also at least one town named Jessen in Germany. There is a botanist Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Jessen (1821-1889) who describes a number of species in Deutschlands Graser und Getreidearten 1863. Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten (4 years older than Jessen) describes the palm as Jessenia in 1857 in the journal Linnaea; Ein Journal für die Botanik in ihrem ganzen Umfange. Jessen published 45 names to Karstens 701
This message was edited 2/18/2020, 2:04 PM
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