etymology
John Dingley
jdingley43 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Mar 31 19:36:45 UTC 2014
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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