Another monosyllabic base form for PSP

[Victor Steinbok]

This is actually a nontrivial point. Bernie Madoff's mother, sister and
wife were not names "Madowa" (although his paternal grandmother might
have been). Madoff's lawyer is Ira Lee Sorkin and, if he's married, I
doubt very much his wife's name is Sorkina. Sorkin's partner at his law
firm is Theodore Elenoff and I also doubt that his wife's name is either
Elenova or Elenowa. Mitterand's Prime Minister in 1992-3 was Pierre
Bérégovoy, and his wife was not Mme Beregovaya. Overall, I always found
it somewhat amusing that famous sports figures from Eastern Europe
always retained their feminine suffixation (just the tennis players
alone: Navratilova, Mandlikova, Sukova, Kuznetsova, Azarenka, Safina),
but none of the women who might have acquired a similar name in the US,
UK or France (by birth or by marraige) would have the suffix (one of
several, actually, with differences between Russian, Ukrainian, Polish,
Czech and Bulgarian, to name the more common sources). The only Western
European exceptions that I am aware of are German actresses Barbara
Sukowa and Hanna Schygulla, both of which largely known because of their
association with Fassbinder. Schygulla, however, was born during WWII in
what is now a part of Poland, so her family likely spoke Polish. Sukowa
was born in Bremen in 1950 and is, therefore, the only anomaly (I'm sure
there are more, but she's likely the best known--certainly, to me). I'm
not aware of any male bearing a family name with a feminine suffix. Even
translations of classical Russian literature (say, War and Peace)
occasionally take liberties and render all names in their male variants.

So, Romanova would have to have direct Russian origin and affiliation.
Romanov would imply no Russian affiliation
(aside from ethnic origin). A switch would only make sense from Romanova
to Romanov, as a means of "westernizing" the name--a plot-induced switch
in the opposite direction makes no sense. I can't say that I am familiar
with the strip or the cartoons in great detail or that the film is on my
"to do" list. So I have no idea what the name is supposed to indicate in
any of them. It's possible that the 80s switch was a result of an
editorial decision to make the name sound more exotic or potentially
villainous/secretive by making it sound more Russian. That's the best
excuse I can come up with.

Incidentally, I'm not aware of any Russian superheroes. That seems to be
mostly an Anglo-American (or just American) "thing". It's not that comic
strips or "graphic novels" were unheard of in Russia until recently, but
both native and translated stuff mostly followed a Popeye/Inspector
Gadget-like model (i.e., Asterix, Suske & Wiske, Tin Tin in translation,
or "original" imitations).

      VS-)

On 5/7/2012 1:52 PM, Jim Parish wrote:
> On 5/7/2012 12:17 PM, David A. Daniel wrote:
>> Odd, what worries me about the whole thing is that her name is Romanov and
>> not Romanova, but maybe there's some comic book history here that I'm not
>> aware of (I had never heard of her before seeing the movie). FWIW (very
>> little) I thought the bat context was fine, in the sense of "just batting my
>> eyes would not have brought you here."
> When she was first introduced in the comics, back in the '60s, her last
> name was given as Romanov. At some point - I think it was in the '80s -
> this was corrected to Romanova. Why the movie should have gone back to
> the earlier name, I have no idea. (I haven't followed comics since the
> early '90s; there may be an explanation somewhere in the intervening years.)
>
> Jim Parish

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