I'm sorry...I didn't catch your patronym.

A couple of nights ago while my company was here, we got into some discussions about differences in American and Ukrainian cultures- a discussion that could go on for months. One of the issues we talked about for a while was one I've discussed many times since arriving here: American middle names.

This isn't really a strange topic to those of us born stateside, I guess. Most of us have a middle name. Many of us like our middle names, others don't. Some are family names, some are just names that our moms liked. Some people have middle names that weren't family names or particularly liked by Mom- just names that "went" with the first name. In the South, it's also very common for people to have double names. However, the point remains that we just don't give it too much thought.

Ukrainians are fascinated by our system of using middle names, because it is so very different than the Slavic system. Ukraine, like many Slavic countries, uses the patronym system. In the patronymic system of naming, a person's "middle name" is his or her father's name + an ending. For men, the Ukrainian ending is "ovich" or "ivich." For women, the ending is "ovna" or "ivna." So, if a father's name is "Ivan," his son's patronym would become "Ivanovich" and his daughter would become "Ivanovna."

A sample name might look something like this:

Irshko Alexander Ivanovich
surname "first" name patronym

Irshko Tatiana Ivanovna
surname "first" name patronym

If I were Slavic, my name would become: Brassart Erin Jeffriovna.

As much as I like my dad, I'm sincerely glad that's not my name! What's your patronym?