Names in Ukrainian - James

[tabaqui]

*waves

Comments

[info_infanterie]

http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/1/James
James=Yakiv=Yasha(familiar)

[tabaqui]

Okay, but...that's not a Ukraine site or anything, I was rather hoping for something a little more than a generic baby-name site? I linked a site like that above.

[info_infanterie]

Check this out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_name

But this one (in Russian) has greatly more info about names in Ukraine
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%B8%D0%BC%D1%8F
Are you satisfied?))

[info_infanterie]

According to you initial question I guess that an Ukrainian woman would call her neighbor James she knows through her life in more easy and familiar way (but incorrect theoretically though) - Zhenya (familiar form to Eugene).

[sollersuk]

Does the Bible Gateway site have a translation of the Bible into Ukrainian? If it does, what I would do would be:

- find a verse in an English version where the name "James occurs

- look that verse up in the Ukrainian version and a bit of thought will tell you which of the words you need.

[tabaqui]

Well, apparently 'James' is a book of the bible, who knew! It says James is 'Якова'

Putting that in 'Ukraine to English', it comes back with 'James'. Putting in James in English to Ukraine gives us :Джеймс

Dzheyms, in Roman letters. I can't make it give me Roman letters for the other, and I'm confused about which is actually right since it's giving me both. HOW IS IT BOTH! So frustrating.

[chamekke]

'Якова' is pronounced 'Yakova', for what it's worth.

[tabaqui]

Yes, thank you, I finally got GT to cough that up. :)

[paradoxhorizon]

Part of your confusion may be that Google Translate's first result looks like it may be trying to give you how a Russian (or Ukrainian) person would write an English name (I think.)
If you do it as Russian, you get more results. Click for more results there and Google suggests Yakob, which is Jacob, the name from which James is derived.

Ukrainian and Russian are probably similar enough in this case that you can go with what Info_Infanterie (whose profile info suggests he/she is Russian) is suggesting. (I also popped a chunk of the linked Russian wiki article into Google Translate and, if you have the patience to break it down into bits Translate can deal with, it looks useful.) People with more knowledge of the Ukraine, please feel free to correct me, though!

[tabaqui]

Well, I do want it in Roman letters, and it gives both the Ukrainian and Roman alphabet. I'm hesitating to use Russian as I don't know if this woman would actually *use* Russian - I'll have to figure out how friendly or unfriendly the two countries were when she was there, etc.

I am hoping for a bite over at multilingual but the comm seems pretty dead.

Thanks!

[camelopard]

I would also vote for Zhenya and Zhenechka as diminutive (from Eugeniy). It's not a correct English version of James - that would be Yakov, - but resemblance of the way of how it sounds is much stronger.

I'm also not sure if a 1919 born woman from Kharkiv region will be Ukrainian and/or would speak Ukrainian at all, but if she is, then she will have no problem with the sound 'dzh'. For Russian it might be a strange combination of letters, but in Ukrainian language combinations of 'dz' and 'dzh' are quite common.

[tabaqui]

I'm not sure, either, but it's a bit more research than I have time for at the moment *and*, despite the bans and other atrocities worked upon the Ukrainian language, I choose to believe she was taught it to keep the language alive and strong despite opposition. :)

And her birth-year was smack-dab in the middle of the Ukrainian war of Independence, so.....

[camelopard]

There were no war of Ukrainian independence in 1919, there was a civil war on the territory of the former Russian Empire. In 1917 there was an attempt to create independent Ukrainian Republic, but it existed for roughly 1,5 years (or half a year of Republic, 100 days of the Getmanat, some time under Germans and so on - it kept getting overtaken by Bolsheviks, Germans and who knows whom). Ukraine as a country - with properly elected government, laws and so on - appeared only in 1991, after USSR collapsed.

Also no one was banning native languages. Everyone was made to learn Russian, but native languages were not oppressed and existed in all 15 Soviet Republics just fine.

I'm incredible curious though how this lady managed to leave USSR in sixties :) It was not an easy task, quite the opposite.

[tabaqui]

Hrmmmmmmmm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_War_of_Independence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_language#Persecution_and_russification

People are passionate about their country, and that passion lingers for decades.
And people got out. *shrug* She's not a main character, there won't be details of her life on offer, but she's a Ukraine woman who speaks the language of her childhood.

Not looking for a fight, or any sort of pro-whatever posturing. Just reading some history and making some decisions regarding a character in a story.

[pour_la_belle]

Yasha, Yasya, Yasik. Trust me, I am Ukrainian ))

[tabaqui]

Excellent! So - are they all variations of the same? Or different versions for different uses? Upthread I posted the bit of dialogue that would be used, so which is the 'formal' James and which is the diminutive (Jimmy, Jamie)?

Thank you!

[pour_la_belle]

Just to be clear, for me it's not obvious that James=Jacob for her, but if yes, Jacob=Yakiv=Яків (ukr), there Yasha is more "official", you can call your colleague like this, and Yasik, Yashka is for kids and very close friends. Yasya is smth in between.
But if James isn't equal to Jacob, I would agree with Zhen'ka, Zhenechka (Женька, Женечка)

I am from Kharkiv by the way))

[tabaqui]

Ah ha! Okay, excellent. Thank you! And why the ' in Zhen'ka? Is that also a diminutive, or just how it's spelled? And is Zhenya incorrect, or just another variation on the same?