Over the past year and a half I've done a lot of genealogical research. This has led me to many documents in many languages! These languages include: Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Slovak, German, Slovene, Polish, and Lithuanian. I don't know anything about German, Slovene, Polish or Lithuanian yet... that's for later. Anyway, most of my research has focused on my dad's family. That part of my family comes from the Rusyn areas in western Slovakia and eastern Ukraine. If you're not looking at Rusyn names... this won't be nearly as helpful, but most of these are fairly constant.
Enough background info, here's a breakdown of a few things that I find fairly common in surnames!
*The H is mostly silent in names that begin with Hr. Stick with silent and you're likely to be closer to how it's supposed to sound!
**In most Slavic languages, Г is transliterated to a G. However, in Rusyn (where names that begin with Hr are common) Г is an H, whereas Ґ is a G.
***This isn't a single letter, it's two. Therefore, no IPA pronunciation.
So, if you know me, you know my last name. If you don't... it has a silent H and a bunch of other stuff non-Eastern Bloc people don't like to pronounce. I'm hoping that this might help people understand how to pronounce fun names like mine! :-P
Hey Christine. I actually found this interesting. Question: What is the difference between Russian and Rusyn?
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