This post was inspired by years and years of watching movies, series, and fanfics royally and hilariously fuck up the use of names in the Russian language, coming to the point where, if I see another pair of best buddies call each other by full name, I will shoot something, I swear to God.
There are 3 ways people in Russia address each other, and they denote different levels of formality, and the relationship between the speakers. You should know this stuff if you wanna write anything that includes Russian people talking to each other, because if you get it wrong, it will be, alternatively, hilarious or cringe-worthy. I have seen soo much of this in fanfic it’s not funny anymore. So read up y’all!
1. Name + Patronymic.
A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a surname based on the given name of one’s father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor. (thank you, Wikipedia!) A patronymic is not a middle name. Russian people don’t have middle names, period. But we all have patronymics!
Use: formal
Used towards: your teacher, your big boss, a senior citizen with whom you don’t have a close relationship (say, your classmate’s grandma), your doctor, any kind of professor or scholar when you address them formally, a client when you’re in the service industry/work with people (not always, but very often).
Example: Ivan Petrovich, Sergey Vladimirovich, Anna Anatolyevna, Maria Sergeevna, etc
Here is the original NBC clip of the Suzaki Miu & Kihara Ryuichi’s Olympic performance for “Yuri on Ice” (Piano), which has been their short program this entire season. Ever since they debuted the routine in Detroit (Yes, DETROIT, where Yuuri and Phichit trained with Celestino!) back in July 2017, I’ve been wondering if they will actually make it to the 2018 Japanese Winter Olympics Team and officially bring YOI to the games. Lo and behold, not only did they make it to Pyeongchang, they even managed to score a personal best for this routine with a 57.42 during the Team Event on Friday!
After watching their performance, Kubo Mitsurou mentioned that the pair’s coach, the legendarySato Yuka/Yuka Sato, actually suggested the track to them. BLESS YOU YUKA.
I keep seeing people linking to the wrong videos (This or this) claiming that it is the Olympics performance – it isn’t! That is actually the pair’s routine from the Four Continents Championships in Taipei back in late January. You can see the signs all over, including in the kiss & cry at the end.
One more interesting thing to note: Suzaki & Kihara will actually skate this SP one more time in Pyeongchang during the actual pairs skating competition. The scheduled date of the SP performances in this event? February 14th, VALENTINE’S DAY.
P.S. This clip also includes YOI megafan Johnny Weirholding in his extreme excitement explaining where the track is from in the beginning 😀
I want to add this too:
For those who can’t see the image, it’s Jeremy Abbott tweeting:
What Johnny and Tara failed to note that Miu has only been doing pairs for less than two years and competed her first international this year, yet they just skated clean at the Olympics… that’s not easy for a veteran let alone a complete rookie! (link to his tweet here)
“I promise faithfulness and patience, respect and lightheartedness,
attentiveness and self-improvement. I will celebrate your triumphs, and
love you all the more for your failures.”
Plume de Lynx 