I’ve barely begun reading Michael S. Gorham’s 2003 Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in Revolutionary Russia (which incorporates his article “Mastering the Perverse: State Building and Language ‘Purification’ in Early Soviet Russia,” discussed in this 2008 post), and I’m already hooked — it’s one of those dense books whose every page provides material to think about. There are all kinds of passages I could quote, but for the moment I’ll limit myself to this (from pages 30-31), on the adoption of new family names (I’ve incorporated the footnotes, bracketed, in the text):
A less well-known study of registered name changes in the early Soviet years brings this point to bear, by showing that, apart from those taking on surnames in the Soviet spirit (Maiskaia, Oktiabr’skii, Leninskii, Mashininskii, Kombainov, Boitsov), hundreds of other citizens took advantage of the spirit of revolution to realize their own, personal transformation, which often had little or nothing to do with supporting or resisting the state. [Surnames listed are derived, in order, from the Russian words for “May,” “October,” “Lenin,” “machine,” “combine,” and “fighter.” …] Some took the opportunity to abandon derogatory “talking” surnames (a relatively common trait in Russian), such as Sobachkin, Korovin, Krysov, Tarakanov, Dikarev, Negodiaev, Durakov, Zhirnyi, Sliun’kov, Pupkov, Pupkin, Kulibaba, Likhobaba, and Sorokobabkin. [Surnames derived, in order, from the Russian words for “dog,” “cow,” “rat,” “cockroach,” “savage,” “scoundrel,” “fool,” “fat,” “saliva,” “navel [pup],” “coolie wench,” “varmint wench,” and “blabbermouth wench.” …] Others simply opted for more prestigious, poetic, or euphonic names — again, having little to do with the new Soviet order per se (Pushkin, Tolstoy, Onegin, Nevskii, Gorskii, Amurskii, Uralov, Anis’ia Khliupina → Galina Borovaia, Samodurov → Poliarnyi, Kurochka → Orlov). [The first surnames listed are derived from names of Russian writers or fictional characters … and geographical references (Neva, gora [“mountain”], Amur, Urals). In the “before → after” examples, Anis’ia Khliupina rejects a surname evocative of “sloshing” or “slogging” (e.g., through the mud) for one that recalls a pine forest (acquiring a more classical, high-society given name as well), a “self-made fool” becomes “the polar one,” and “Chickenman” becomes “Eagleton.”]
I loved seeing Pupkin in the second list, a name indelibly associated with Robert De Niro’s great role in The King of Comedy,
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