How to guess one's nationality by their surname: an interesting trick

A surname gives you the opportunity to learn about the history of your ancestors, their origin, character traits, and appearance. To determine which nationality a surname belongs to, you need to pay attention to suffixes and endings.

Oksana Shevchenko, a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, wrote about this in her blog. According to her, the most common suffix for Ukrainian surnames is "enko".

If you know Bondarenko, Petrenko, Tymoshenko, and Ostapenko, they are indigenous Ukrainians.

Other groups of Ukrainian surname suffixes are "eiko" and "ko": Belebeiko, and Bobreiko.

And the "-kyi" part can also be used to identify Ukrainian origin: Berezovskyi, Mohylevskyi.

Russian surnames have the following suffixes: "-an", "-in", "-skikh", "-iv", "-ivs", "-skoy", "-tsoy", and "-ikh".

• Smirnov;
• Donskoy;
• Sedikh.

Polish surnames have the suffixes "-ski" and "-cki" and the endings "-y," and "-a":

• Sushitsky;
• Kowalska;
• Wozniak;
• Mickiewicz.

English surnames were formed from the name of the place where the person lived. For example, Scott or Wales. They are also formed from the names of professions: Smith is a blacksmith.

French surnames usually have the prefix "Le", "Mon" or "De" before them: Le Germain, Le Pen.

German surnames were formed from:

• first names: Peters, Jacobi;
• characteristics of appearance: Klein (small);
• occupation: Schmidt (blacksmith), Müller (miller).

Tatar surnames have suffixes "-iv" and "-in": Yuldashin and Safin. Italian surnames have the suffixes "-ini", "-ino", "-ello", "-illo", "-etti", "-etto", "-ito": Moretti, Benedetto.

Most Spanish and Portuguese surnames have the ending "-ez" or "es": Gomez, Lopez.

Norwegian surnames are formed with the suffix "en" (Larsen, Hansen), and Swedish surnames end in "-sson", "-berg", "-sted", "-strom" (Forsberg, Bosstrom).

Belarusian surnames end in "ich", "-chik", "-ka", "ko", "-onak", "-yonak", "-uk", "-ik", "-ski" (Radkevich, Kukharchik), and Turkish surnames end in "-oglu", "-ji", "-zade" (Mustafaoglu, Ekinci).

Armenian surnames end with the suffixes "-yan", "-yants", "-uni" (Hakobyan, Galustyan), and Georgian surnames with "-shvili", "-dze", "-uri", "-ava", "-a", "-ua", "-ia", "-ni" (Mikadze, Gvishiani).

Greek surnames are characterized by the endings "-idis", "-kos", and "pullos" (Angelopoulos, Nikolaidis).

Japanese ones are formed from one or two words, for example, Kitamura (north and village).

Earlier, OBOZ.UA told what Ukrainian surnames were given to the rich in ancient times.

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