How to recognize the name of an ancestor in Russian?

In an older blog post, I already wrote about the transition from German to Russian in church books. In this post, I will explain how to recognize names and surnames in church books in Russian.

In 1891, an order was issued in the Russian Empire that church registers should henceforth be kept in Russian . Until then, Lutherans in Latvia and Estonia had kept their books in German. Of course, German pastors now had to rack their brains not only about how to translate designations of professions and social statuses and causes of death, but also how to correctly write down names and surnames in Russian.

Instructions and laws were issued on how to correctly write words in Russian. What were the instructions?

To maintain accuracy, pastors were instructed to preserve the original German spelling as much as possible.

1) Names were not allowed to be arbitrarily changed.

• Instead of adapting words to Russian equivalents, they were written as close to the original form as possible.

Examples:

Elisabeth → Елизабетъ ( not Елисавета)

Voldemar → Вольдемаръ ( not Владимиръ)

It should be noted here that the orthography of the Russian language has changed and several letters are no longer used today, such as “i” and the accent mark “ъ”.

2) The words had to match the original spelling, including endings.

Examples:

Magdalene → Магдалене

Paul → Пауль

Peter → Петеръ

Theodore → Теодоръ

Marie and Maria → Марiе и Марiя

Julie → Юлiе

Thomas → Томасъ

3) Unusual consonant combinations were also preserved in the Russian language.

• German words with consonant combinations that are not common in Russian were not simplified .

Examples:

Moritz → Моритцъ

Florell → Флорелль

Schmidt → Шмидтъ

Kupffer → Купфферъ

4) Patronymics were not added to Lutheran registers.

• Unlike the Russian tradition, where the father's given name was added to a person's full name, this practice was not followed in Lutheran church registers.

Example: In Russian tradition, a man named Ivan whose father was Peter would be called Ivan Petrovich (Ivan, son of Peter), and a woman would be Maria Petrovna (Maria, daughter of Peter).

• However, Lutheran registers did not use such forms. Instead, a simple format was used:

"Son, daughter of Mr. NN" → сынъ, дочь Господина NN

5) Surnames in Russian were not inflected.

• In Russian grammar, surnames are typically declined according to case.

• However, in Lutheran registers , German surnames were not declined, ensuring that their form remained unchanged regardless of grammatical context.

  
  

6) The original words were also added in Latin script.

• To avoid confusion, all words were written in both Russian and, in parentheses, Latin script .

• This rule "saved" those genealogists who do not know Russian, because it was possible to identify at least the first and last names.

Name and surname in Russian and German.

Here I must remind you what this applies to Lutheran books . If your ancestors were Orthodox, then their names in the church books will have been changed. This is written about in another blog post .

Below is an example of the most popular personal names and their translations in German and Russian.

(Source: Fund 4799, description 2, file 44, LNA LVVA)

Of course, the rules are not always followed and there will certainly be examples where the entry in the church book differs from these instructions.