European Name Suffixes

[Aschenbach]

People are always calling Chelsea 'Chelski' because of Abramovich but doesn't 'ski' denote a Polish name? I thought Russians used 'ov(a)'  or 'ovich'.

[twiglet4frog]

tabloid newspaper invented it as a headline and u know how they are great at researching what they are writing!!

[acw]

Chelsovich doesn't make a good pun/sound as funny.  Simple as that. 

You're correct though - "ski" does indicate a surname of Polish origin. 

[shaneystar]

The Russians are sometimes known as the "Russkis".
I think they were nicknamed this during the war.So I suppose Chelski could be a follow on from there.

[THECORBYLOON]

In the Russian language "russki" means Russian and various websites state the "ski" suffix appears in Russian surnames and other Slavic names.

[THECORBYLOON]

In the Russian language "russki" means Russian and various websites state the "ski" suffix appears in Russian surnames and other Slavic names.

[THECORBYLOON]

In the Russian language "russki" means Russian and various websites state the "ski" suffix appears in Russian surnames and other Slavic names.

[smorodina]

Yes 'skii' does denote a Polish name, but there are a lot of Russian names that end with it, sometimes Polish by origin. Tchaikovskii, Musorgskii, Dostoevskii, Mayakovskii.

The 'ii' part is the Russian ending for a masculine adjective which is why it is found at the end of 'russkii', but this can only refer to one male person. A woman is 'russkaya' and several people would be 'russkiye'. Lazy journalism takes the one form and uses it whenever it hears about a Russian connection.

[jno]

Not necessarily lazy smorodina (there's a nice Russian-sounding name?) - English itself doesn't change endings like that, except for the s in plurals and possessives, so when you invent an 'English' word you wouldn't necessarily tack a foreign ending on to it. Words like hippopotami and bureaux always look a bit odd in English with their foreign plurals, at least to my eyes.

[smorodina]

I really meant 'lazy' in the sense 'everyone else does this so why make the effort to be original', rather than worrying about foreign grammar. it's an interesting point though - the BBC recently took the decision to call the novel by Tolstoi, Anna Karenin (using the English grammatical logic) rather than the more acurate and more usual Anna Karenina. Whilst in the context of a lame 'joke' it makes little difference, it's probably more courteus to use the correct form of somebody's name. Whatever next - Maria Sharapov, Anna Kournikov?

[Ouisch]

A tenuous rule of thumb is that if the surname ends in "ski", it's Polish, but if it ends in "sky", it's probably Slavish or Russian.

My own surname is of Czechoslovakian origin, and ends in "chik."  In Poland, the same name would end in "czyk."

 

Just as an aside, it's interesting the way so-called ethnic names predominate in certain areas.  I'm from a suburb of Detroit, where a large portion of my high school class was of Eastern European extraction; here's a sampling of the surnames from my yearbook:  Litwinowicz, Naguszewski, Sobocinski, Szymsyck, Diaczok.  My husband grew up in rural Georgia, where most of the surnames in his yearbook are Anglo-Saxon one or two syllable names (plenty of Smiths, Jones, Johnsons, Woods, etc). 

[Dudley]

I heard it should really be Chelskov but even the Chelsea Megastore sells caps with Chelski on them probably because it rhymes with Chelsea.