etymology

[Tony Brown]

John,

In 2002, Pravda.ru published an article entitled: "The Mysterious
Genealogy of President Putin," which may be of interest to you.  You can
access the article using the following link:
http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/05-11-2002/1528-putin-0/

Tony Brown

On 3/31/14 1:36 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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