Bulgarian Names
Jodie writes:
Like many words in the language, names in Bulgarian have masculine and feminine forms. All names for girls will end with ”a”. This may be just a feminine form of the same name for a boy – for instance, Stanislav, a boy’s name, becomes Stanislava for a girl – or Ivan becomes Ivana. Not all masculine names have a feminine version and vice versa, but boys' names will end with a consonant and girls' names will end with “a”.
What makes this even more interesting, is that this same rule carries forth to last names! Therefore, a married couple will have different last names – that is, the woman’s last name will be the same as the man’s, but with an “a” at the end – so the husband will be “Petrov” and the wife will be “Petrova” – and the children will have last names according to which sex they are.
We also learned that during the Communist rule, there was a list of names that you were allowed to name your children. For example, Alexander was allowed, but Alex wasn't. If you really wanted to name your child a name that wasn’t on the allowed list, you had to pay extra for it.
Like many words in the language, names in Bulgarian have masculine and feminine forms. All names for girls will end with ”a”. This may be just a feminine form of the same name for a boy – for instance, Stanislav, a boy’s name, becomes Stanislava for a girl – or Ivan becomes Ivana. Not all masculine names have a feminine version and vice versa, but boys' names will end with a consonant and girls' names will end with “a”.
What makes this even more interesting, is that this same rule carries forth to last names! Therefore, a married couple will have different last names – that is, the woman’s last name will be the same as the man’s, but with an “a” at the end – so the husband will be “Petrov” and the wife will be “Petrova” – and the children will have last names according to which sex they are.
We also learned that during the Communist rule, there was a list of names that you were allowed to name your children. For example, Alexander was allowed, but Alex wasn't. If you really wanted to name your child a name that wasn’t on the allowed list, you had to pay extra for it.
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