Serbian women's names. History and meaning

Serbian women's names are impressive for their diversity. They not only sound beautiful: every female name is filled with a special meaning and has several abbreviated versions. A feature of Serbian names is the ability to indicate in their documents any version of them.

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 it in a special way.

Serbian women's names of that time and their meaning: Gordana (proud), Tiyana (world), Bodena, Boyana (battle). The girls were also named for their personal traits, they gave names that denote animals, plants, berries: Senka (shadow), Jegoda (strawberry, berry), Srebryanka (silver), Milica (sweet), Slavica (glorious), Vedran (merry) , Dejana (enterprising).

Christian origin

In the second half of the 19th century, Christianity came to Serbia from Byzantium. Since that time, residents had to call their children at birth only canonical names that had a church appointment. By origin, they were mostly ancient Greek or Roman early Christianity.

Girls were called: Sophia (wisdom), Natalia, Natasha (church Christmas), Jovan (good God), Angela (angel), Milica (sweet), Willow (from the glorious "willow tree"), Slavna (gorgeous), Valeria (Strong), Snezhana (woman of snow), Yana (pardoned by God), Anna (the grace of God) and so on.

For a long time, canonical names have been adopted among Serbs who are accustomed to calling children in their native language.

After 1945, the choice of names became free. This was facilitated by the establishment of socialism throughout the territory of Serbia. At this time, names appear on the basis of their own vocabulary.

Features of education

Serbian women's names in 20% of cases are formed with the help of the suffix "ka". In Russian, this suffix gives the word a pejorative connotation, and in Serbia it does not carry any lexical load: Zhivka, Slavyanka, Zdravka, Milinka. In female names, suffixes "ina", "ana", "egg" are also found (Snezhana, Yasmina, Slavica, Lilyana, Zoritsa). All Serbian women's names end in "a".

Girls who were born in noble families, gave names consisting of two roots - Dregoslav, Radmila, Negoslava, Negomir. But they were a rarity, as the compound name was given mostly to a man.

Modernity

The most common beautiful Serbian female names in our time are: Theodora, Jovanna, Yves, Yana, Tatiana, Sarah, Katarina, Sofia, Maria, Angela. Some of them borrow when daughters are called in other countries.