Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 December 14

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December 14

Russian name Raskolnikov

Does the Russian surname Raskolnikov (Раскольников) really exist, i.e. are there or have there been real people wearing it? The only examples I've seen here and on the Russian WP are the Crime and Punishment protagonist and a Bolshevik whose this wasn't the real name. Could the surname have been made up by Dostoyevsky? Whatever the case, is there any theory as to the choice of this name by Dostoyevsky? I read the novel a long while back and I could be wrong but I don't recall there was anything connecting Rodion Romanovich's family to the Raskol. Contact Basemetal here 00:09, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Remember that раскол needn't refer to Old Believers and the Orthodox Church, and Rodion Romanovich himself was very much "split" or torn between extremes (whether you wish to see it as good and evil or "altruism and apathy" as quoted from our article). I'm pretty certain it was made up. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

At least one person existed. Though the name had to be quite rare.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:50, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Sluzzelin and Lyuboslóv. If this name is so rare is it a possibility that it is both real and made up, in the sense that Dostoyevsky did not actually know it was a real name but by accident came up with a name that happened to coincide with one?

Lyuboslóv: How did you find this person? Did you directly go to Memorial (Russian site, English site) or did you wade through Google results page after page?

That this name actually exists brings up for me a more general question about Russian surnames. (WP articles on the topic are pretty short on any substantial historical information.) Were Russian surnames imposed by a bureaucracy or were they chosen? Would anyone call themselves a Raskolnik? I thought that was others called Old Believers and that they would call themselves just Orthodox Christians. If anything, if it was up to them, they would probably call the majority Raskolniks. (Not saying they actually ever did of course.) BTW when did the majority of Russians acquire surnames? Contact Basemetal here 14:51, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I've just googled and get lists.memo.ru. Then I went to the letter Р. Actually, the list has been very criticised as inaccurate and exaggerated (as you can see the Gdov's Raskolnikov was released a day after the sentence), but leaving politics and history aside, it turned out to be a good base of the surnames of the former USSR.

If you want know about Russian surnames you might read a very good book by B.-O. Unbegaun "Russian Surnames" (1972). Short answer: usually surnames were chosen either by the bearers or rather by their surrounding society (as in any other country). Bureaucrats hardly invented them, but just fixed. I saw census registers from the 17-18th centuries with surnames for common folks. But sometimes Russian peasants might have no surnames up to the end of the 19th century. Though if they wanted to work out of their home county (uyezd) they should get a permit to leave (passport), and as many Russian peasants might work far away from their home, the "namelessness" mustn't to be too widespread.

"Raskolnik" may look like a quite harmless word but it was actually a abusive nickname like English "heretic" or "heathen". Obviously the Old Believers did never call themselves "raskolniks". Dostoyevsky had to know that so the name was rather intentionally invented by him. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

come they do

How could such a construction be explained?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:21, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

It's not a "construction", it's a fragment of a sentence which is meaningless out of context... AnonMoos (talk) 08:32, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

"Come they do when they are called"? Know I not what it's called, but it's just a way to emphasize the "coming", rather than the more prosaic "They come when they are called." Clarityfiend (talk) 10:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

It's kind of a poetic usage, and as Clarity notes, it re-emphasizes the "come" part. I could say about Field of Dreams, "The Voice said, 'If you build it, he will come,' and come he did." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:43, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

As to what it's called, it's a type of inversion. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 11:37, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• Which of the following sentences do not sound right in your version of English:

1. come they do but they don't do much work
2. come they do but not much work
3. they do come when they are called
4. come they do when they are called
5. when they are called come they do
6. when they are called they do come
7. beer they do drink but not much of anything else
8. beer they drink but not much of anything else
9. drink beer they do but not much of anything else
10. drink beer they do but not much else
11. drink beer they do but not much work
12. drink beer they do but they don't do much work
13. they come alright all right
14. they do come alright all right
15. come they do alright all right
16. come, they do come alright all right

Contact Basemetal here 12:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Personally, 16 is completely incomprehensible, 2 involves a fairly heavy ellipsis to make it meaningful ("Come they do but not much work [is done]" is how I'd read it), 13, 14, and 15 use "alright" in a way that I can't immediately interpret (I'm not sure if it means "indeed", so we could rewrite 14 as "Indeed they do come", or "all right", so we could rewrite 13 as "They all come right"), and the rest are fine. Tevildo (talk) 12:42, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

For the last four I did intend "all right" ("most certainly") all right. For number 2 what I was trying to do was precisely to check how that ellipsis would be interpreted and accepted. Could you interpret number 2 as being for "come they do but [they do] not [do] much work"? How would it compare with "come they do but not much else"? Just as odd? For number 16 I wanted to check how acceptable it would be to repeat "come" for emphasis ("as for coming, they do come all right"). I take it it is not acceptable to you. Contact Basemetal here 13:01, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Numbers 2 and 11 don't hang together correctly as sentences in my version of English. The meaning is fairly clear, but the attempted parallelism of "do drink beer" and "do work" grates slightly. "They do not much work" is not the normal word order in English. 16 needs a comma. Dbfirs 13:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes I agree with the comma at 16. Does that make it alright for you then? Contact Basemetal here 13:17, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I read it as "come they do, come alright!" (a colloquial expression with that non-standard spelling). Dbfirs 20:56, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I was a little lazy to give the whole context, I thought it would be clear without it.

The Life of Birds (BBC, 1998, Ep. 10). David Attenborough says:

— Why they come here in such numbers is a mystery. It can hardly be that they seek warmth in this muggy tropical atmosphere of central Brazil. They don't feed here. Perhaps it is because there are fewer hawks around to harry them than in the forest. But whatever the reason, come they do. In March, however, many of them will migrate north to the United States, and there they take up residence in very different homes.

I supposed it is an inversion, but what the type exactly? How is it named and where can I read abut it? I'm sure I've met this before (in other contexts).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:53, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I would call this particular inversion a chiasmus; removing the intervening sentence, we have "Why they come here is a mystery, but come they do." Tevildo (talk) 19:30, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

But it seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, this is just plain vanilla inversion for emphasis. So common in English (and also in Dutch and I think in German I might add): "Never could I imagine he'll do such a thing" for "I could never imagine etc." and a trillion (at least) other examples. Just Google "Emphasis inversion". The first page you get already gives you a bunch of examples. Contact Basemetal here 20:21, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Emphasis it is. Some of your other examples have the ABBA pattern suggested by Tevildo. (Thanks for the link, by the way -- I haven't met that term before.) Dbfirs 20:56, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Use just about any of these tortured constructions in an English pub, and likely you are Yoda to be called. --Dweller (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC)