Names in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and CIS countries

Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional ways of identifying a person by name in countries influenced by East Slavic languages - mainly Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and some South Slavic nations, including Bulgaria, Serbia, and Macedonia. They also occur in non-Slavic Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan as a result of the expansion of Russia and Russification.

The standard structure of the full name is the following:

As with most cultures, a person has a given name chosen by the parents. First names in East Slavic languages mostly originate from two sources: Orthodox church tradition (which is itself of Greek origin) and native pre-Christian Slavic lexicons.

All first names are single. Doubled first names (as in, e.g., French, like Jean-Luc) are a very rare foreign-influenced instance. Most doubled first names are spelled with a dash (e.g., Mariya-Tereza).

Being highly synthetic, Eastern Slavic languages treat personal names as grammatical nouns, applying the same rules of inflection and derivation to them. Consequently, it is possible to create many forms with different degree of affection and familiarity ad-hoc by adding corresponding suffixes to the special auxiliary stem derived from the original name. This auxiliary stem may be identical to the word stem of the full name (e.g. full name Жанна Zhanna can have the suffixes added directly to the stem Жанн- Zhann-, such as Жанночка Zhannochka,) while most names have it derived unproductively (e.g. the name Михаил Mikhail has the auxiliary stem Миш- Mish- which produces such name-forms as Миша Misha, Мишенька Mishenka, Мишуня Mishunya etc., not *Михаилушка Mikhailushka).

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