Gender changes in Slavic surnames

If the surname in question is adjectival in nature then it agrees in gender. If is a noun then it doesn't.

Tolstoy is an adjective, so it changes, Pasternak is a noun, so it doesn't.

Pisarchuk is a noun, it doesn't.

Sklodowski is an adjective, so it does.

Czech and Slovak are a bit different - if it's adjectival, than only the ending changes, if it is a noun, than -ova is appended to it:

Navotny becomes Novotna, but Navratil becomes Navratilova.

In Polish, the suffix changes depending on whether the female is the wife or the daughter. Does this happen in other Slavic languages too?

I don't speak any Slavic languages, but I noticed in a bookshop in Prague a book in Czech about (or by) a certain former British prime minister. The name of this person on the book cover was "Margaret Thatcherova".

Do other Slavic languages do this to non-Slavic names of foreigners?

Do other Slavic languages do this to non-Slavic names of foreigners?

Russian uses the foreign name but spells it phonetically in Cyrillic letters. I just looked at a Russian-language paper, and in U.S. news there are references not only to Barack Obama but to two of his "sovietniks," Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod. All three names are their actual names, transliterated. ("Sovietnik" means adviser or counselor.)

In Polish, the suffix changes depending on whether the female is the wife or the daughter.

That's interesting; I didn't know. No, in Russian the female form of the surname would be the same for the wife or the daughter; you would differentiate them by their patronymics. In Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya," for example, both Vanya and his mother have the same surname, hers Voinitskaya and his Voinitsky, but she is Marya Vasilievna Voinitskaya and he is Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky. Her father's name would have been Vassily, but the name of her late husband (Vanya's father) would have been Pyotr. Vanya's deceased sister was Vera Petrovna Voinitskaya. She shared the feminine form of the surname with her mother, but her patronimic was the feminine form of her brother Vanya's patronymic.

(That all seems so simple to me, half-Russian by birth, but it may be a little confusing to others.)

Edited by NorthAmerican.

#2 bjd, I think this is no longer the norm. Sklodowska is both a daughter and a wife of Sklodowski. Orzeszko, a noun, is the same for both male and female now, whereas a hundred years ago or so it would have been Orzeszkowa for a married woman.

Interestingly, Lithuanian still does that:

Inga Sakalauskaite's father's surname would be Sakalauskas and her mother's Sakalauskiene.

Latvian, the only language closest to Lithuanian, doesn't do that (married and unmarried) but does normally differentiate between genders:

Kuprans - Kuprane

NuWon, in Polish I think it depends on the ending of the surname. My own name (which I don't want to put on here) does that, but names like Sklodowski or Orzeszko wouldn't.

Czech and Slovak are a bit different - if it's adjectival, than only the ending changes, if it is a noun, than -ova is appended to it:

But some are also invariant. My wife says roughly 1% invariant, 10% feminise an adjectival ending, and the rest -ova. My wife was unable to explain why these uncommon surnames are invariant, other than "it's just like that". She pointed one out on the door of a flat as we were going up a staircase somewhere, but I've forgotten what it was.

An amusing situation is that if you are Pavlov's wife, then in Russia you are Pavlova. But the Czech wife of Pavlov would be Pavlovova. And they call you that even if you are Russian. They have no shame about putting endings on non-slavic foreigner's names either. You see books on shelves in Czech bookshops with authors like Agatha Christieova and JK Rowlingova. Though not uniformly, I think because sometimes non-Czech authoresses refuse to allow their name to appear in Czech form.

Streets, which I guess are feminine in Czech, get names like that too. Rooseveltova, Churchillova, etc.

(If I recall correctly. Correct me if I don't.)