A person’s name is not just a combination of sounds, it carries a secret meaning. Our ancestors believed that, calling the baby some name, they endowed him with certain traits of character and even fate. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with the variety of identical male and female names, find out the reasons for their appearance, consider the list in Russian and English, and learn brief information from other languages.
Reasons for the appearance
We know that there are names by which you can call both boys and girls, for example, Alexander and Alexandra, Eugene and Eugene, this phenomenon is not surprising. But what is the reason for this coincidence? First of all, it is a tradition to call children the names of Orthodox saints, which has become firmly established in Russia after the adoption of Christianity. But since the saint is a specific person, they could name a child of the same gender in his honor. And to solve the problem, the modification of a specific name helped.
The next factor that influenced the appearance of the same female and male names, the list of which will be presented below, is an unequal number of both in the Russian language. So, in the “Dictionary of Old Russian proper names” compiled by N. M. Tupikovs, there are more than 5 thousand masculine variants for women and 50 for women. In 1891, the month contained 900 masculine and slightly more than 200 feminine names. Such inequality forced to take the male variation and transform it into a female one.
A lot of names arose after the revolution, when a woman began to perform the same duties as a man. And the main source of such education was men's uniforms. From here comes an almost complete coincidence (the key and often the only difference is the endings -a, -i in female variations, for example, Vladlen-Vladlen). As a result, there are almost equal numbers of names for boys and girls in the language.
Slavic options
Let's get acquainted with what names can be both female and male. First of all, it is an ancient layer that came to us from the Slavs. In these times, the name of the person was given great importance, people believed that the name given to the newborn will largely determine his character, occupation and fate. In ancient times, paired names were given to twins. For example, if two babies were born at once, they could have been called Borislav and Borislav, these ancient versions appeared in honor of the god of the winds, Borea.
Here are a few more examples.
There were completely identical variants in sounding, for example, Will - at the same time male and female name with the meaning of “free man”, Share - with the meaning of “fate”. Now they are almost out of use.
So, as we see, female names were formed among the Slavs by adding male endings –a, sometimes the process went in the opposite direction, then the suffix –k was added to the female form.
When trade with the Greeks appeared in Russia, after the adoption of Christianity, then along with overseas goods came new names - Alexander (Alexandra), Julius and Julia, Anastasia and Anastasius.
Soviet period
From the point of view of paired names and names in general, the time after the revolution and the period of Soviet power are very interesting. It was then that many options appeared, some of them are used to this day (and not all owners know the "secret" of their occurrence), while others can not cause anything but a smile. Let's get acquainted with the Russian identical male and female names of the Soviet period. There are quite a lot of them:
- The barricade and the barricade are descended from the common noun and are not used now.
- Vladilen and Vladilena, Vil and Vila, Vilen and Vilena, Viliy and Viliya - from "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" in various ways of reducing the name and use of initials.
- Vilor and Vilora come from a slogan that sounds like "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Organizer of the Revolution."
- Gertrude and Gertrude are the hero and heroine of labor, respectively. Interestingly, the Soviet version is in no way connected with the West European Gertrude, an exclusively female name.
- Krasarm and Krasarma - a strange name for modern man comes from the "Red Army", as children were called in the 20-30s of the last century.
- Lemar and Lemara - from two surnames, Lenin and Marx. And vice versa, Marilen and Marilen - from two surnames Marx and Lenin.
- Lenin and Lenin (with an emphasis on the letter “and”), met in the 20-30s of the last century.
- Tractor and Tractor. These options became very popular in 1923, when Soviet industry launched the first tractor.
Here are two more amusing options - Oyushminald and Oyushminalda, Chelnaldin and Chelnaldina - respectively, O. Yu. Schmidt and Chelyuskin on the ice. Most of the options for this period are a thing of the past.
Modern Russians
We will continue acquaintance with paired names, in our time there are also quite a lot of them. Their short list looks like this.
As you can see, in most paired names the sound and meaning almost completely coincide, only in some examples of subtlety the meanings differ.
Foreign
We give examples of the same male and female names in English. This is Alex and Alexa, Christian and Christina. The name Alex has several more female duplicates - Alexis, Alexia. Two names immediately come from the male “Adam” - Addison - the son of Adam and Adisson - the daughter of Adam, their spelling is slightly different. More examples:
- Alan and Alanna - "beautiful" and "beautiful."
- Burt and Berta - "bright, ". There is also a female version of Berti with a similar meaning.
- Brendon and Brenda.
- Brooke - male and female versions are completely identical, the name means "stream".
- Danielle and Danielle.
- Eric and Erica.
- Gabrielle and Gabriella.
- George and Georgia.
- Kyle and Kylie.
- Michelle, both male and female name.
- Nicholas and Nicole.
- Patrick and Patricia.
These are the same male and female English names.
Examples from other languages
It is very interesting that paired names are found in so many languages of the world. For example, in Spanish there are options for Alejandra and Alejandro, Carl and Carlos, Andrea and Andres, Claudia and Claudio, Haun and Juanita.
In Africa, the names most often coincide, indicating the order or time of birth of the child. For instance:
- Baako - born (born) first.
- Dubaku is the 11th child in the family, both a girl and a boy.
- Idou - born after the twins.
There are a lot of paired names among the Yakuts, who paid great attention to observing the tradition of naming a baby. For example, Ayahan - a name that could be used by both boys and girls, has the meaning of "travel."
