Serbian female names impress with their diversity. They not only sound beautiful: each feminine name is filled with special meaning and has several abridged versions. A feature of Serbian names is the ability to indicate any version of them in documents.
Pagan origin
Serbs often gave the child a name that carried the function of "protection." It was a superstitious people, and parents tried to protect the baby from evil spirits, calling him in a special way.
Serbian female names of that time and their meaning: Gordana (proud), Tiyana (peace), Bogena, Boyana (battle). The girls were called according to their personal character traits, given names denoting animals, plants, berries: Senka (shadow), Dzhegoda (strawberry, berry), Srebryanka (silver), Militsa (sweet), Slavitsa (glorious), Vedrana (funny) Dejan (enterprising).
Christian origin
In the second half of the 19th century Christianity came to Serbia from Byzantium. Since that time, residents should have called their children at birth only by canonical names that had a church purpose. By origin, they were mainly ancient Greek or Roman era of early Christianity.
Girls began to be called: Sophia (wisdom), Natalia, Natasha (church Christmas), Jovana (good God), Angela (angel), Militsa (dear), Willow (from the glory. "Willow tree"), Slavna (magnificent), Valeria (strong), Snezhana (woman of the snow), Yana (pardoned by God), Anna (mercy of God) and so on.
The canonical names have taken root for quite some time among the Serbs, who are used to calling children in their native language.
After 1945, the choice of names became free. This was facilitated by the establishment of socialism throughout Serbia. At this time, names appear on the basis of their own vocabulary.
Education Features
Serbian female names in 20% of cases are formed using the suffix "ka". In Russian, this suffix gives the word a derogatory connotation, while in Serbia it does not bear any lexical load: Zhivka, Slavyanka, Zdravka, Milinka. In female names there are also suffixes “ina”, “ana”, “itza” (Snezhana, Yasmina, Slavitsa, Lilyana, Zoritsa). All Serbian female names end with "a".
The girls who were born in noble families were given names consisting of two roots - Dregoslava, Radmila, Negoslava, Negomira. But they were rare, since a composite name was given mainly to a man.
