i'll be dying for your sins, and aiding to the cause

[musesfool]

My Russian-speaking friends - or you know, Russian-speaking people who are reading this, I don't want to label our relationship if you're not comfortable with that - what's a cute Russian name for a tiny puppy? Like the kind of thing you'd give to the runt of the litter but also the kind of thing where you nickname a big guy Tiny or a bald guy

Comments

[caughtinanocean]

Hm, idk if I've ever seen the whole big-guys-called-Tiny thing in Russian, but I'm almost sure it happens. Will have to ask the parents. "Бегемот" (Begimot), which mean hippo, would be a pretty cute name for a dog along those lines. It would probably get called things like "Бегемоша" (Begemosha) a lot, since in Russian you infantilize stuff by adding suffixes. "Медведь" (Medved') means bear, and "Медвежонок" (Medvezhonok) means cub, and that would cute, too.

If you just want straight-up little names: "Малыш" (Malish) means "little one," and "Чебурашка" (Cheburashka) is a character on a super iconic Russian cartoon everyone has seen. He is a furry animal of indeterminate species, and is friends with/rescued by a crocodile named Гена (Gena). Actually, "Крокодил Гена" probably wouldn't be a terrible name for a dog, either. I'll come back with more ideas if I think of them. Going back and forth between Russian and English on my keys is starting to make both languages look weird!

[musesfool]

"Бегемот" (Begimot), which mean hippo, would be a pretty cute name for a dog along those lines. It would probably get called things like "Бегемоша" (Begemosha) a lot, since in Russian you infantilize stuff by adding suffixes.

Ah, that's so cute! I might use that! (I'm pretty sure that's how it works in Italian, too - adding "-ino" makes something small and adding "-one" makes it big, though I never spoke it fluently and it's been years since I had it in school.)

And thank you! (I forgot to say it!)

[caughtinanocean]

Any time! :) *face palms aggressively at own typo*

[kattahj]

I was just reading this comment out of general interest, but then I noticed Cheburashka and went "OMG Drutten!" This figure was highly popular in Sweden too, enough that Swedish television started to produce its own episodes of "Drutten och Gena." (That the name Drutten is so far from Cheburashka I think is because it connects to the etymology - "Drutta" means to fall inelegantly.) There were even Drutten candy drops!

I found a clip on YouTube of Drutten & Gena singing a song...

Sorry, you probably don't care, I was just hit with immense childhood nostalgia and had to share.

[caughtinanocean]

Haha, that's pretty cool. Interesting to see that something that's such a huge deal culturally in the former Soviet Union spread elsewhere, too! The creator of the character resurrected some super archaic Russian to get that name, so I think etymology was definitely the right choice in terms of translating it.