How Sakharov Became Sweet: Metamorphoses of Russian Surnames in America

The article deals with the transformation of Russian surnames after their owners' emigration to the USA. This issue is of great interest both in scientific and practical terms. On the one hand, the methods and extent of surname changing can help in analysing the language behaviour of Russian immigrants. On the other hand, knowledge of all details of Russian surname presentation in Roman letters can be useful while searching for personalities in the English language network. It is especially important for researchers looking for biographic, bibliographic, judicial, and genealogical information. Despite the fact that the language of Russian immigrants in various countries has already become the research topic more than once, none of the authors have analysed the ways how surnames were changed in the USA. This makes this article really relevant. In the article, various modes of surname Americanization are analysed on the examples of Russian emigration to America in the 20th century (mainly as a result of the Civil War and the Second World War). They are transliteration of surnames in the Roman alphabet, partial transformation (shortening, distortion, or translation), as well as complete rejection of an old name in favour of a new one. Transliteration is considered the most common way of surname transferring. In the early 20th century, there were no special rules in Russia regarding transliteration. Besides, English was not as popular as French and German. Thus, emigrants wrote down their surnames in Roman letters from their own consideration. This entailed a variety of options while transferring some Russian letters. The following factors are highlighted as those determining the variant of transliteration: the country where emigrants prepared their documents for entry into the USA; the foreign language they preferred as well as the level of knowledge of that language; the desire to preserve the national origins of the surname. When Russian names were shortened, they often received a new sound in accordance with the English phonetic system, which made them significantly different from the original ones. There were also cases when people trying to make their surnames more American translated them into English, more often indirectly, or used various transformations, sometimes making the surname nearly unrecognisable. Cases of a complete rejection of the Russian surname and its replacement with a new one are relatively rare and connected with extraordinary circumstances or artistic activity. The article is based on documents of Russian public organisations in the USA from the Museum of Russian Culture (San Francisco), e.g., the Russian Engineering Society in Los Angeles and the Russian-American Cultural Society. Some private collections and the authors' field research materials have also been used. They were collected on the Pacific coast of the USA, where Russian graves at the largest cemeteries in Los Angeles and San Francisco were examined.

Keywords

Authors

References