Petro?

[imwitty]

Nope. Just vice versa ...(:'-))) "Petrovich" (like "Oleksiyovych" mentioned
above) in Russian and Ukrainian is what is called in Russian "otchestvo":
it derives from the FIRST name of the father ("otets" ) of the particular
person. In Russian and Ukrainian, the normal, accepted, polite, and
official names contain 3 parts: first ("imya" -- "i" pronounced as "ea" in
"east"), second "otchestvo" in Russian or "po-bat'ku" ("by father") in
Ukrainian,  and third is the last name ("familiya" in Russian, or
"prizvische" in Ukrainian.) To confuse you even more, the ending of the
second name for women, is not "--vich" , but "--ovna" or "--yevna" in
Russian, and --"ivna"/ "yivna" in Ukrainian. It's NOT the same as the
English middle name!

Also, in OTHER Slavic languages (i.e. Serbian) there are LAST names, which
sound similar to "Petrovich", but as far as I recall, they have stressed
FIRST syllable.


On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 9:56 AM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Petro?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> iw:  <<Ukrainian name "Petro" ... THE STRESS on the 2nd syllable>>
> WB:  <<Petro>> [peh-TROH].  Wow. Curiouser & curiouser. I'm still puzzled
> by the form.  Could it have derived from a clipping of <<Petrovich>>, which
> has the stress on the /o/??  (I'll pay closer attention to Anglophone news
> readers; am sure they were saying [PEH-troh].
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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