etymology

[Ksenia Adamovitch]

Hello,

Firstly, Сталев, Ленов, Путев, Путьев, Медведин, Зверин, Голубин - are also
all existing last names, it's not really a set rule that only certain
suffixes are to be used in last names. Some are more common than others,
but that often depends on a specific region more than grammatical rules.
Last names ending in "in" - are often, though also not always, names based
on belonging to a family, clan, father (sometimes mother), etc. My guess
would be that (depending on how far back the last name can be traced back)
- it's either from "путь" (as a native speaker, I do not think Путев or
Путьев is more likely than Путин, they sound exactly the same to me as far
as last names that could come from "путь"), or from Путя, short for a
number of Slavic names (Путивой, Путимир, Путислав, Путисил, Путята, etc) -
simply meaning "son of Путя", which could stand for any of those full
names.
My guess is that unless his family can be traced to a specific person with
one of those names - it's impossible to actually say for sure, especially
considering the etymology of most of those names would still trace back to
"путь".

Re- Rasputin - if you mean Grigory Rasputin - that was his actual last
name, he was born to one Efim Rasputin. I suppose at one point before
becoming a family name it was indeed a nickname (not an expert on Rasputin
here!), but that's not really uncommon for Russian last names.


Hope this helps,
Best,
Ksenia A.


On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 3:36 PM, John Dingley <jdingley43 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Can someone enlighten me as to the etymology of the
> Russian family name Путин? Presumably one does not
> want to derive it from путь since путь is an
> original masculine -i stem noun (the only one to
> survive into Modern Russian) and one would expect
> *Путев, which is the case with other family names
> derived from masculine -i stems, e.g
> Медведев < медведь
> Зверев < зверь
> Голубев < голубь
>
> As a rule of thumb, the suffix -ин is used to form
> family names from nouns ending in -а/-я, e.g
> Воронин < ворона, Ленин < Лена and feminine
> -i stems, e.g. Сталин < сталь.  The suffix
> -ов/-ев being used elsewhere. This distribution
> betrays their possessive adjective origin.
>
> Unbegaun (p.161) explains Распутин as a nickname,
> where different formation rules apply.
>
> John Dingley
>
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