Russian names, patronymics and surnames for genealogists

Updated October 5, 2026

Russian naming conventions are a gift to genealogists: every person's middle name tells you their father's first name. Knowing a few rules turns one document into two generations of your family tree.

The patronymic names the father

Rodoslov uses this automatically: it proposes the missing father's name from a patronymic and flags records where the child's patronymic doesn't match the father's name.

Surnames change with gender

Surnames ending in -ov, -ev and -in take -ova, -eva and -ina for women; -sky becomes -skaya. A brother and sister appear as Lebedev and Lebedeva. In 19th-century records a married woman is often written only by first name and patronymic — find her maiden name in the marriage entry.

One name, many spellings

Names were transliterated by ear and by the rules of each language: Кузнецов appears as Kuznetsov (English), Kusnezow (German), Kuznecov (scholarly), Kouznetzoff (French). Search all variants, and search in Cyrillic.

Peasant surnames appeared late

In 18th- and early 19th-century records a peasant is often written as "Ivan Petrov" — meaning Ivan, son of Pyotr, not a surname. Most peasants acquired fixed surnames in the second half of the 19th century, some only in the early 20th. A family's surname may come from a grandfather's first name or nickname, so search by village rather than by surname alone.

First-name equivalents

Immigrants often adopted local forms of their names. Common equivalents:

Rodoslov matches such equivalents (Ivan = John = Johann) when it compares records.