I don't think so, but don't know for sure. I think it extends as far back as the generation prior to 1900, but everything beyond 1917 is rather hazy...
we added the first letter to make it more pronounceable to Americans - it didn't work
Heh -- to break up a consonant cluster or something? (I'm actually blessed with a name that's relatively easy to pronounce -- most reasonably intelligent people get it on first try, though they are normally apprehensive when encountering it for the first time -- but that absolutely nobody could spell. Which is not their fault, really, as the only way its spelling makes sense is if you know the Russian word it's derived from.)
My mom has a coworked in a different office who is a Muslim from Damascus with the same last name
Hmm... that's got to be pretty rare! (My husband and I have actually been puzzling over this now for like 15 minutes, trying to come up with a class of names that this would work for... it's not an Ashkenazi name is it? Something Hebrew-based?)
I have a friend whose family comes from Leningrad, but who has a purely Sephardic last name for some reason (there's some kind of odd history of his great-great-grandfather eloping with the daughter of a Russian nobleman or something, but still doesn't really explain how a Sephardic last name was preserved all this time.
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Date: 2007-01-31 07:18 am (UTC)I don't think so, but don't know for sure. I think it extends as far back as the generation prior to 1900, but everything beyond 1917 is rather hazy...
we added the first letter to make it more pronounceable to Americans - it didn't work
Heh -- to break up a consonant cluster or something? (I'm actually blessed with a name that's relatively easy to pronounce -- most reasonably intelligent people get it on first try, though they are normally apprehensive when encountering it for the first time -- but that absolutely nobody could spell. Which is not their fault, really, as the only way its spelling makes sense is if you know the Russian word it's derived from.)
My mom has a coworked in a different office who is a Muslim from Damascus with the same last name
Hmm... that's got to be pretty rare! (My husband and I have actually been puzzling over this now for like 15 minutes, trying to come up with a class of names that this would work for... it's not an Ashkenazi name is it? Something Hebrew-based?)
I have a friend whose family comes from Leningrad, but who has a purely Sephardic last name for some reason (there's some kind of odd history of his great-great-grandfather eloping with the daughter of a Russian nobleman or something, but still doesn't really explain how a Sephardic last name was preserved all this time.
Funny things, last names...