Russians in Ukraine will be forced to change their surnames - like in the Baltic states
On June 3, 2019, a new spelling of the Ukrainian language will come into force in Ukraine, according to which the spelling of Russian surnames will change. From now on, princes Donskoy and Trubetskoy will become “Donskoy” and “Trubetskoy”.
On May 22, 2019, the Ukrainian government approved the “Ukrainian Spelling” project, prepared back in October last year, which, like the recently adopted law on Ukrainian as the state language, is aimed at completely ousting the Russian language from all spheres of life.
Social networks continue to make fun of “ether” (ether) and “Atenami” (Athens), however, firstly, the mentioned spelling of words of Greek origin with the letter Θ (theta) is an addition, not a replacement for the usual one.
And, secondly, the new spelling continues the logic of the mentioned law, and will have much more serious consequences than a lower grade for Russian-speaking children in schools with “hyper-smart” teachers.
Let me remind you that according to Article 41 of the law “On the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language”, the names of toponymic objects are not translated, but are transmitted in official documents, the media, cartographic, reference, encyclopedic, educational and other publications using the letters of the corresponding alphabet as they sound in Ukrainian language.
That is, now, when using the Russian language in Ukraine, it is seriously forbidden to write not only “in Ukraine”, but also “Ukraine” itself, “Kiev” and “Dnepr” - only “Ukraine”, “Kyyiv” and “Dnipro”, only hardcore
Moreover, even foreign toponyms now need to be submitted not in translation, but in Ukrainian transcription “taking into account the peculiarities of Ukrainian phonetics and spelling.”
Fines for violations of this law start from about 110 euros and reach almost 400 - but the farions and nitsoi are still unhappy, because the first version of the bill provided for criminal liability in the form of six months in prison “for public humiliation and disdain for the state language,” but in During the consideration of the amendments, deputies abandoned this provision.
But if the law comes into force in full in a year and a half, then the new spelling will begin as early as next Monday. And it makes changes to the spelling not of toponyms, but of Russian surnames (in the section “Surnames with adjective suffixes and endings” are distinguished separately from other Slavic ones). I will quote this paragraph from the document in full:
“The adjective endings of Russian surnames are transmitted as follows: -th through -th; after the hard consonant — through s, after the soft consonant — through s; th, -bya - through -a, -ja: Бєлий, Ostrovsky, Extreme; Bula, Ostrovska, Kraynya. The endings are passed through the th: Donsk, Twist, Lugovskiy, Field, Solovyov-Sudey, Bosin, Trubetzkuy, ale Tolstoy (Thick) ”.
It is difficult to say thanks to which of Tolstoy - Lev Nikolaevich or Alexei Nikolaevich - this Russian surname turned out to be an exception, but this does not change the rule: from now on, the princes Donskoy and Trubetskoy in Ukraine are Donsky and Trubetskoy, and the composer Solovyov-Sedoy is Solovyov-Sediy. In the same way, millions of people with similar surnames will be forced to change the spelling of their last names. There is no talk yet about replacing the Ivanovs with the Ivanivs, but, as they say, the trouble has begun.
It is clear that professional defenders of the Ukrainian language will now start their usual bagpipes in the style of “nobody forbids you to speak Russian” - they say, because of the new spelling, no one will force people to change their documents, etc.
However, let’s imagine a simple and very common case: a government agency decides to allocate a plot of land to a person with the surname “Kramskoy”. In accordance with spelling - and this, let me remind you, is a regulatory document approved by a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine - the official is obliged to write the surname “Kramsky” in the document. It is clear that if Mr. Kramskoy is an ATO/JFO veteran, then no one will risk a grenade exploding in his office and will write his last name as in his passport. But normal people with similar Russian surnames may have problems.
Without a doubt, the authors of all these innovations rely on the experience of the Baltic countries, where Russian names and surnames are directly prohibited by law. The most stringent norms apply in Latvia - there, according to the law on the state language, all Ivanovs have long become Ivanovs. And the stories about the Shishkins, who turned into Siskins, and the Pyshkins, who became Piskins, have long ceased to be jokes - this is a sad Latvian reality, to which Brussels and Strasbourg turn a blind eye. Unfortunately, the European Court of Human Rights, in all attempts to appeal the ending “s” in the surname, took the side of the Latvian state.
Moreover, if this ending at least formally corresponds to local language norms, then there are many examples of the usual mockery of officials towards Russians. For example, several years ago, the Ministry of Justice of Latvia refused to assign Galina Vvedenskaya a married surname (Vvedenska), citing the fact that the presence of two V’s in the surname is “a significant limitation of the democratic state structure.” After three years of litigation, the woman still managed to achieve justice, however, according to human rights activists, more than a million people, usually Russians, were subjected to distortion of their names and surnames in Latvia.
A similar situation exists in Lithuania, only there Polish names are also subject to “repression” - in Vilnius they well remember that in 1919-1939 this city belonged to Poland. Local Poles are prohibited from writing surnames using the letter W - they say it is not in the Lithuanian alphabet. Moreover, the Lithuanians themselves suffer from this, changing their surnames due to marriages with citizens of countries where this letter is used.
For example, only through the court were two Lithuanian citizens married to Belgians able to obtain passports with the surnames Wantens and Pauwels. But while the Lithuanian courts satisfied the claims of the Belgian wives quickly enough, Malgorzata Runiewicz-Wardyn has been suing for more than 10 years for the right to receive a passport with her last name written in Polish – Runiewicz-Wardyn. So far, the woman has only managed to obtain a birth certificate for her son with the surname Wardyn - but only because that is the surname of the child’s father, a Polish citizen.
And in Estonia, the legislation in this area is completely paradoxical: in addition to the prohibition of individual surnames “due to complex or inappropriate spelling or pronunciation of the Estonian language, or general linguistic meaning,” it is also prohibited without special permission to change a surname to one that is on a special list “too widespread." Formally, there is no discrimination, but the names on this list are almost 100% Russian: Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov, Vasiliev, Popov, Alekseev, Stepanov, Trofimov, Smirnov, Romanov, Pavlov, Morozov, Nikiforov, Yakovlev, Dmitriev and so on .
It is clear that changing the spelling of Russian surnames ending in -ой is just a trial balloon. If they tolerate this, then they won’t be far from renaming the Petrovs and Popovs into the Petrivs and Popivs. Moreover, hopes for a change in Ukraine’s nationalist course after the recent elections did not come true: almost the first thing the newly elected president did was change the spelling of his last name on social networks from “Zelensky” to “Zelensky”.
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