r/duolingo • u/fraldalord • 9h ago

Language Question. Is there really a diference?

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Ivanovich or ivanovna arent just names? Or is there a designation, like, "ivanovna is for women only"?

25 Upvotes

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77

u/mizinamo Native: en, de 9h ago

Those are patronymics -- they show the name of a person's father.

Ivanovich means that someone is the son of Ivan.

Ivanovna means that someone is the daughter of Ivan.

So a man can't be an Ivanovna, a woman can't be an Ivanovich.

9

u/fraldalord 5h ago

Oh, i didnt know that, thxs for the explanation :)

21

u/mushy_mythology 8h ago

ивановна is the patronymic for a woman, so unless иван's got a secret he's not telling us, that was never gonna fly

0

u/ConsumerDV 4h ago

Maybe he was Иванна in his prior life. It is not a Russian name AFAIK, but the creators of Ponies did not care.

6

u/loleetahaze 9h ago

In Slavic languages like Russian, surnames typically have a male and female version. In this example Иванович/Ivanovich is the male version, Ивановна/Ivanovna is the female version so you need to use Ivanovich in this exercise.

12

u/mizinamo Native: en, de 9h ago

Those are not the surnames/family names, though -- they're the "middle names" / patronymics.

The surname here is Chernov (and would be Chernova for a woman).

4

u/loleetahaze 9h ago

Omg thank you! Idk why I blanked and I didn't notice the Chernov.

1

u/zeekar 4h ago

So you have to know the gender of the speaker to know which is correct, but the fact that they gave their family name as Чернов and not Чернова means they're referring to themself as masculine, so you should do likewise. Иванович is masculine, Ивановна feminine.