Karkaroffa educator

[clio44a]

No: HPFGUIDX 95504

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, MadameSSnape at a... wrote:
> In a message dated 4/9/2004 3:42:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> clio44a at y... writes:
> Maybe I'm wrong (since I don't speak Russian), but I think that 
the 
> ending -off points more towards a Russian origin of the name. A 
> familiy name ending with an -ov would speak for the origin in 
> another slavic language. Written Russian does not use latin 
letters, 
> so this might be up to the translator, as Sherrie pointed out. 
IIRC 
> the ending no matter how it is written means 'son of'.
> 
> ========================
> Sherrie here:
> 
> And yet, it's Anton Chekov (or sometimes Chekhov) - 
never "Checkoff" - and 
> I've never seen the late Soviet Premiere referred to 
as "Brezhneff"... The more 
> I think about it, the more my creaky old brain seems to believe 
that the -off 
> transliteration was used primarily in older works, and maybe some 
British 
> ones.  I do know the Yul Brynner film uses "Karamazov", e.g.  
Technically 
> speaking, the -ov ending would be the more correct/direct 
transliteration of the 
> Cyrillic characters.
[snip]
> Sherrie
> "Unless history lives in our present, it has no future." 
> PRESERVE OUR CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELDS!
> 


You really made me thinking. Maybe we should leave the problem to 
some native speaker. 

I base my understanding of how names are written on how they are 
translated and written into German, my native language, and I have 
just realized that the spelling of Russian names in German might be 
very different from English. Many would end with an -ow in 
the "german version" like Karamasow and Breschnew, or with an -ff 
like Stroganoff or Chargaff. 
Since JKR is an English writer I guess I should leave this field to 
either English or Russian people. Sorry for butting in, but I still 
believe I. Karkaroff is from Russia while A. Dolohov is Czech.


Clio