Gender Bending Names

The problem of grammatical gender vs. personal gender in names:

One of the most frustrating problems in medieval Russian onomastics, and in the study of medieval names in any language, is the relative lack of documentation of women's names. A brief glance through Wickenden's Dictionary of Period Russian Names indicates that there are roughly 50-100 men's names documented for every 1 woman's name.

Another frustration is that a lot of names that look like they should be suitable as women's names, because they end in -a or -ya (which in modern Russian means that they are grammatically feminine) are documented only as men's names. One example is "Pukhta" which means "puff" and is documented as a masculine name.

As Wickenden states in the Grammar introducing his dictionary, there are numerous examples of native ("old Russian") names with both masculine and feminine forms. Names ending in -a or -ia are grammatically feminine and names ending in anything else are almost always masculine. Eg. Zhdan can only be a masculine name, and the feminine form is Zhdana or Zhdanka. Not all masculine names have feminine counterparts (and vice versa!), so it may be that feminine names cannot be formed from all masculine names. And, as noted above, the feminine counterparts can often be used as names by men, as diminutives.

It seems that medieval Russian men were quite comfortable with grammatically feminine names (as diminutives or descriptives). The number of men's names that end in -a or -ia are too numerous to count. The modern word for owl, sova, is grammatically feminine, but is listed in Wickenden as a man's name.

Feminine Name Construction

research in progress, over 300 masculine/feminine name pairs identified so far.

The o/a switch:

Some of these masculine names with -a endings come about because medieval Russians had a tendency to switch their o's and a's. A word like кольцо (kol'tso) , which is grammatically neuter, was sometimes written with an "a" at the end, which makes it look grammatically feminine. This is a likely explanation for the Kharko/Kharka pair noted in the precedent quoted above.

Masculine Diminutives:

More than one person has glanced through Wickenden's Dictionary of Period Russian names and noticed that a lot of men's names end in -a, which makes the names grammatically feminine. A lot of these are diminutive names.

Russians loved diminutives. As stated in Wickenden (3rd Edition, p. xx), medieval Russians seemed quite willing to use diminutive names as proper names for legal purposes and even as the basis for patronymics - the equivalent of having "Jim" on one's birth certificate or calling oneself "Johnnyson".

However, while "masculine" diminutives in Russian are created by adding feminine grammatical forms, most are not a simple matter of just adding an -a to the end. (Mikhail becomes Mikailo, Mikha, Mikhaila, Mikhaiets, Mikhailo, Mikhalka, Mikhalo, Mikhas', Mikhei, Misha, etc.)

Apparently men in medieval Russia were comfortable using "feminine" names like Mikhaila in a similar way that women in the modern USA are comfortable using "masculine" names like Pat. The reverse was NOT true. Out of the hundreds of women's names in Wickenden, the number with masculine or neuter endings is incredibly small. See below.

Example of women's names with a masculine or neuter ending (from 3rd edition Wickenden):

• Aitugan - non-Russian name
• Bogumest - perhaps should have a soft-sign on the end. In modern Russian, mest' (месть) is feminine and means vengeance as opposed to mesto (место) which is neuter and means place.
• Dimut
• Dobrovest' - some Russian words that end in ' are masc. and some are fem.
• Fatma-Saltan - clearly foreign, saltan is the Russian form of sultan.
• Gnevoi - !
• Izmaragd - looks foreign
• Kogorshed, Kovgorshad, Kovgorshed - var. of Gorshedna
• Kovan - var. of Kovana
• Kunei
• Kunko, Kunku
• Kuntse
• Liubone
• Machko - victim of o/a switch?
• Malfrid - Malfred' is a similar name with a soft-sign on the end which is sometimes masc. and sometimes fem.
• Moiko - victim of o/a switch?
• Rado - victim of o/a switch?
• Siuiunbek, Siuiunbuk, Siunbek - tsaritsa from Kazan
• Smils
• Uirko - victim of o/a switch?
• Zbynko - victim of o/a switch?

Identical or Almost Identical Names used for both men and women:

Bela Belka Benko/Benka - man/woman Boika Boriuta Desha Dobritsa Dokuka Dragin'ia Draia Dubrava	Ianka Iarukha Ioanna Iona Itka Kalia Kasha Kashka Kata Katrusha Khovra	Leva Liba Lishka Liska Liuba Liubka Luka Makhonia Maliuta Malusha Mana	Nedelia Neliubka Niksha Olenka Ovtsa Paraskov'ia Pelegeia Petra Petrusha Priba	Sonia Ulita Vekenega Vera Vershina Vladyka Voina Zabela Zbinko/Zbinka Znata
Edviga (fem. is var. of Iadviga) Fekla Galka Ganka Golda Gorbusha Groza	Kora Krasa Krushka Kudra Kuna Kunei Kunka	Maniia Manka Marusha Marushka Mar'ia Miakusha Milenia Mira Moiko	Radka Rado Ratka Rozha Sel'ianka Shchuka Sina Slava Sobina