Hallo Olga.

08 июл 03 01:30, Olga Zhegulo schrieb an Oleg Lobachev:

 OZ>>> but Danish Olga is from Russian.

 OL>> Err... It came back transformed?

 OZ> Why not? There lots of such words.

f.e.? =)

 OL>> Here in Germany pretty much Tanyas [but rather spelled Tanja] and
 OL>> Sashas, but the last is here just a man's name %) - and most of them
 OL>> are not "russian" or "ex-USSRish" in any kind.

 OZ> I mean that after many Russians moved to Europe Russian names come in use.
 OZ> _Common_ people discovered that there are such names.

Ok, that is highly probable.

 OZ> Like after Civil war in Russia in the time of NEP there was a fashion
 OZ> to take foreign names.

Oh, the namegiving in the 20-s is a seperate story...

 OL>> Wasn't that - may be as exotic as it now is - but also before 1917?

 OZ> Do you think Europe knew about Russian culture and Russian names?

Not en masse.

 OZ> If you learned history at school you would know that Russians were
 OZ> considered to be barbarians.

Unfortunally I had a bit different history at my school time...

 OZ> At Peter I time not more then several thousand of Russians studied in
 OZ> Europe. But their aim was to learn skills from foreigners and foreign
 OZ> languages. Anyway it was not long.

And much later on? In XIX century?

 OZ> Before Fatherland war in 1812 many gentlemen in Russia spoke French and
 OZ> sometimes much better then Russian

Yip.

 OZ> but have you ever read about French gentlemen studiing Russian?

Me, and about a Fench gentleman - never. But there's rumor, that one of the
older calculus professors [note: he's not that old, to be the soldier in
the WWII] at my university did it in order to read some articles not in the
ugly translation. :D

 OZ> Well it was 1813 when Russians passed through the whole Europe and came to
 OZ> Paris but they were back after several months leaving the word 'bistro'
 OZ> and memories about wild cossacks.

Yip.

 OZ> Then in the beginning of 20th century there were famous Russian
 OZ> cultural seasons in Paris when Europe discovered we have culture and
 OZ> art. So I can suppose also use of Russian names.

I agree about the great impact of that cultural seasons - in the culture,
but I doubt of that as _mass_ event, which could give babies popular
russian names.

 OZ> Then about our relations with Germany princedoms and Holland. They came to
 OZ> Russia to live but not vise versa at least appreciable numbers of people.
 OZ> Catherine II invited any people to occupy free lands in former New Russia
 OZ> - and we still have many Germans in Volga region and Ukraine.

Yip. And they are comming now backwords to Germany. =)

Greetingz Oleg                  [Annual identity crisis]
--- np: ДДТ - Бродяга.