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anticodon • last Sunday at 7:45 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

Can you tell a Russian from Ukrainian? Can you even tell an Ukrainian name from Russian name?

Replies

kgeist • last Sunday at 9:36 AM

There's a bunch of phonetical differences:

  rus. Volk ~ ukr. Vovk
  rus. Aleksey ~ ukr. Oleksiy
Different suffixes:

   rus. Tarasov ~ ukr. Tarasenko, Tarasiuk
Ukrainian surnames often have no suffixes at all (more often than in Russia):

  rus. Melnikov vs. ukr. Melnyk
  rus. Kovalev vs. ukr. Koval
Although it doesn't say anything about a person's nationality for certain because of migrations.
Etheryte • last Sunday at 10:56 AM

This is akin to asking if someone can tell an German name from a French name. Sure, there are some shared ones, but for most intents and purposes locals can easily tell the two apart.

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hiciu • last Sunday at 8:35 AM

Wow. Can you tell a Korean person from Chinese person? Polish name from a Czech one?

Different cultures, different languages, it's obvious to the locals.

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