Russian etymological question

I don't know Russian or Ukrainian but I have known or heard of some Dimitrenkos, Ivanenkos and other Ukrainians whose family hame was clearly firstname + enko. I always figured that -enko meant something like "son of". So I would guess that Lukashenko was son of Lucas/Luke.

Interesting sigline. Nabokov, the father of the emoticon. :-)

Vinny's instincts are correct. The -enko suffix means "son of" or "family of" and is associated with Ukraine, and, to a lesser extent, Belarus. (The latter, obviously, in this case). You generally won't find it among ethnic Russians (where the equivalent ending is ov / ova ) so your heading for the thread is off the mark.

how about the second part of the post tho -the luk in lukin, lukashevich -are these lukases?

why can't lukashevich just be a simple "son of lukas", as in Boris Lukasevich Putin - the son of Lukas Ktoznaetovich Putin?

Maybe Lukin means something like onion farmer. An onion related surname sounds a bit funny, but I knew a girl with the surname Onions, so there's no reason it can't be the same in Russian.

I've met many Russians with a surname ending in -enko who say they don't know of any family connection to Ukraine. Whether this is for political reasons or because their connection to the Ukraine was so many generations back I couldn't say.

mathilda, I think you've misread that sentence. There's no reason to think that the family name Lukin is Russian. Luxon (< Luke's son) certainly isn't. I think a Russian speaker would imagine Lukashevitch to be son of Lukas as #3 says.

Actually the name is Alyaksanar Lukashenka.
The -a ending is typical for Belorussian. In media, his name is usually spelled in its Russian version (with the ending -enko), transliterated in Latin alphabet (Alexander Lukashenko).

As for Lukin, my guess is that it's a Russian name, derived from 'luk' (onion). Well, it is a Russian name, but it might be another too.
'-in' is one of typical endings in Russian surnames - Voronin, Kosygin, Lenin.
Names of plants, including fruit and vegetables, are found in many surnames (not only Slavic) in central Europe. Other "versions of Lukin" I've come across with, were Zwibel (German) and Cybulski (Polish).

#5 it would be Boris Lukich;
#8 Luk is indeed onion in russian, but the last name derived from this would would be Lukov; as Lukin is from Luke's (provided the stress is on "I" not on "U').