//Hi Oleg, //

Once on *05.07.03* you wrote about "OFFICIAL NOTICE!!!" to Olga Zhegulo

 OZ>> but Danish Olga is from Russian.

 OL> Err... It came back transformed?

Why not? There lots of such words.

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

I mean that after many Russians moved to Europe Russian names come in use.
_Common_ people discovered that there are such names. Like after Civil war
in Russia in the time of NEP there was a fashion to take foreign names.

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

Do you think Europe knew about Russian culture and Russian names? If you
learned history at school you would know that Russians were considered to
be barbarians. 

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

Before Fatherland war in 1812 many gentlemen in Russia spoke French and
sometimes much better then Russian but have you ever read about French
gentlemen studiing Russian?

Well it was 1813 when Russians passed through the whole Europe and came to
Paris but they were back after several months leaving the word 'bistro' and
memories about wild cossacks. Then in the beginning of 20th century there
were famous Russian cultural seasons in Paris when Europe discovered we
have culture and art. So I can suppose also use of Russian names.

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

Bye.
O.Z. oz{at}newmail.ru


--- WP/95 Rel 1.78E (215.0) Reg.