etymology

[John Dunn]

I wonder if I might dot a few i's and cross a few t's in this correspondence.

1. Not all surnames come down from the dim and distant past.  People change their surnames and in certain circumstances have surnames bestowed upon them.  There is no compelling reason why these new surnames should follow the word-forming rules of Old Russian.

2. Pluralia tantrum by definition have no nominative singular form and, indeed, no gender, since gender distinctions were lost in the plural sometime around the 15th-16th centuries.  One must assume that surnames derived from such nouns either reflect a nominative singular which is now lost or are formed by analogy with other surnames derived from the same root or are formed arbitrarily.

3. I presume Голдин is another matrilineal surname; what about Берлин and Цейтлин?

4. I am no Romance philologist, bur I think Putin's putative (for want of a better word) Latin ancestor must have come from Spain, not Italy.

John Dunn.

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