Early 17th century names from Zhytomyr, Ukraine.

by Rebecca Lucas (ffride wlffsdotter)

© 2013; all rights reserved
last updated 21st October 2013

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Masculine Personal Names and Bynames
  3. Feminine Personal Names and Bynames
  4. Patterns of Bynames
  5. References

Introduction

The sources for these names are written in Ukrainian, and I do know any Ukranian.
These names come from the city of Zhytomyr, today in Ukraine but at the time part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The documents themselves were written in Ruthenian, and date to 1605, 1609, and 1648. A third article by Lytvynchuk (2004) includes the names of men from Zhytomyr in 1611.
From checking one of the sources Lytvynchuk (2002a, b) cited, “Dilova mova Volyni i Naddnipryanshchyny',” it does not appear that these names have been normalised. The brackets used throughout these pages appear in the printed sources that Lytvynchuk is working from, but it is unclear to me if they are used to introduce missing letters where a titlo is indicated, and/or it if is the best guess of a modern editor.
I have simply transliterated these names, and sorted them by date, then alphabetical order.

Transliteration

Following in the footsteps of Wickenden (1996, 2000), these names have been transliterated using the Library of Congress system for Ukrainian. I have included the Cyrillic forms, to better differntiate between the letter and the digraph both transliterated as "kh" (see below), as well as for submitters wanting to use another transliteration system, if desired.

Cyrillic LoC Cyrillic LoC
А, а A, a О, о O, o
Б, б B, b П, п P, p
В, в V, v Р, р R, r
Г, г H, h С, с S, s
Д, д D, d Т, т T, t
Е, е E, e У, у U, u
Є, є Ie, ie Ф, ф F, f
Ж, ж Zh, zh Х, х Kh, kh
З, з Z, z Ц, ц Ts, ts
И, и Y, y Ч, ч Ch, ch
І, і I, i Ш, ш Sh, sh
Й, й Ĭ, ĭ Щ, щ Shch, shch
К, к K, k Ь, ь ' (soft sign)
Л, л L, l Ю, ю Iu, iu
М, м M, m Я, я Ia, ia
Н, н N, n
There were a few characters that do not appear in modern Ukrainian, these include:
ы, transliterated as y
ъ, transliterated as " (hard sign)
Ѣ, transliterated as ě
ѡ, transliterated as ō.

Conversely, there were two modern Ukrainian letters that did not appear in any of the names listed: Ї, ї, or Ґ, ґ.
Note: The digraph "кг"/"kh" has a different sound to "х"/"kh" - it sounds like "g". So Ядвикга and Кгабриел are transcribed Iadvykha and Khabryel, but pronounced Iadvyga and Gabryel (Woolhiser and Viačorka, 2012).

References