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Oh well, Ukraine is still very related to Russia – you can live there easily without knowing Ukrainian like at all, so all the names Ukrainians use tend to be Russian. One little exception seems to be Oksana – all the Oksanas I’ve known have been originally from Ukraine. :P

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I didn’t actually mean that only intelligentsia is using Ilyusha. Ilyukha sounds very street-related compared to Ilyusha, if you know, what I mean. It is like using “bad” words – you will never call yourself Alyokha among grandparents as well as you will never use vulgar words. Of course Ilyusha and Alyosha (Andriusha – Andryukha, Vanyusha – Vanyukha, Markusha - Markukha) are also the “official” nicknames. :) My mom, who is very proud of her belonging to “intelligentsia” would never call anyone of her friends Ilyukha.

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Btw, I just thought I could add about nickname usage something. Actually there are two categories of name-nickname relationships.
1) Names like Andrei, Ilya, Yeva, Mark, Zhanna, Nikita, Oleg, Yan, Vera, Igor, Zoya. When people with those names introduce themselves, they never say: “I’m Olyezhka” or “I’m Verochka”. Those pet forms are too familiar and they aren’t used as often as nicknames for the names of the second cathegory.
2) Aleksandr, Yevgeny, Olga, Yelena, Yelizaveta, Mikhail, Anna, Grigory, Yuri, Darya, Maria, Konstantin, Anastasia, Stanislav. It would be considered very pretentious to say: ”I’m Konstantin, how do you do”. People use actually always in any situations either the nicknames or, in official situations, the name and the patronymic. I introduce myself to any Russian human as Masha. My Russian teacher is Olga Gennadyevna for me, Olya at home.

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Well, mostly people go by one chosen nickname. A friend of mine, Maria, does never go by Masha – she is Marusya. I know a Shura. He is plain Shura and it would be weird to hear him going by Sasha or Sanya. But well, my granddad was at home Alek, but his colleagues called him Sasha. So it depends. But I’ve never met any Dmitry who would have gone by both Dima and Mitya, so yes; I guess that the situation is a little like with James “Jim”/ James “Jamie”. Russian nicknaming is very traditional – if you’re Anna, you’ll be actually your whole life Anya and if you name your daughter Darya she’s automatically Dasha. The most “odd” nicknames I’ve seen are: Masha for Marina and Asya for Anna. It is still impossible to imagine an Anastasia who’d go by Anya or Aleksandr who’d go by Lyosha. The rules are pretty strange. :D

This message was edited 6/19/2008, 11:28 AM