Russian (?) name

In the Moldovan version of Cyrillic, Э was an A, not an E. So the name was really Avet, which is an Armenian name. I think it's a variant of Avetis, which means "good news."

Edited by: DianaHaddad because of a typo.

Very cool, Diana, thanks.

What made me curious in the first place was an article in the current the NY Review of Books where they gave the spelling as Yvet. I got Evet from wikipedia. It's what his friends still call him.

In case anyone is interested: he was born in Moldova. From something he says in the NYRB article it sounds as if the language of the home was Yiddish.

Wikipedia in Hebrew says that the 'main' language of his parents, "and of Lieberman until age 3," was Yiddish. (No details on what happened at age 3. I guess he went to kindergarten.)

(No details on what happened at age 3. I guess he went to kindergarten.)

That gave me a good laugh. My mother, born in the United States, spoke only Russian at home, but learned some English from playmates. She didn't speak much English until she started school.

My father, also born in the US, did not learn English until he started school at age 6. He lived way out of town on a farm, so rarely heard anything but Italian. He also did not see a lightbulb until his first day at school.

From the Jerusalem Post: [Lia Shemtov, sponsor of Yiddish Language and Culture Day at the Knesset, said] Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman spoke exclusively Yiddish until the age of six.

From the Atlantic Monthly:
Lieberman was born in Kishinev, in Soviet Moldova, in 1958...His strongest memory is of his parents’ insistence on speaking only Yiddish in public. “We’d get on a bus, packed with people, all gentiles … and every head turned toward us. I was a kid—3, 4 years old—and I had the feeling we were different, something else completely, and that everyone was cursing to himself—‘You Zhids, go to Israel! What are you doing here?’—and [my parents] would speak Yiddish!” It was “a matter of character” and a lesson in defiance.

According to Avigdor Lieberman Biography, "Avigdor, who is called Evik by his friends..." That is the blogger's translation of "Авигдор, которого друзья называют Эвик," from this source.

#5 -- That makes the quote in the NYRB more understandable, nutrax. Thanks.

One wonders why they gave him an Armenian name though.

An interesting article at that source. What struck me was that it says "the Liebermans have three children - daughter Mikhal' and sons Jacob and Amos."

Is Mikhal' a woman's name? It seems unusual.

VinnyD: Did the Soviet authorities require that children be given only "approved" names? I ask because some of my Russian relatives emigrated to Argentina, where children's names had to come from an approved list; I don't remember if it was the government or the Catholic Church that approved the names, but the "family" given names died out as a result. Not all bad, in my opinion, because they included such names as Evdokia, Euphemia, Marfa, et al.

Edited by NorthAmerican to add the note to VinnyD.

Yes, Mikhal is a very common female name in Israel, usually transcribed as Michal. (Daughter of King Saul, wife of King David, not to be confused with the Polish male name Michał, pronounced something like mi-hau.)

(I have several relatives called Michal.)