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[yers.livejournal.com]

Top 10 Russian surnames, and what they mean:

1 Смирнов — Smirnov, “of the meek one”*
2 Иванов — Ivanov, “of Ivan (John)”
3 Кузнецов — Kuznetsov, “of the blacksmith”
4 Попов — Popov, “of the priest”
5 Соколов — Sokolov, “of Falcon”*
6 Лебедев — Lebedev, “of Swan”*
7 Козлов — Kozlov, “of Goat”*
8 Новиков — Novikov, “of the newcomer”
9 Морозов — Morozov, “of Frost”*
10 Петров — Petrov, “of Pyotr (Peter)”

*presumably from a nickname

A longer list: 50 most common Russian surnames

Comments

[arvi.livejournal.com]

In Russian translator is "переводчик", and "tolmach" nowadays means nothing. But still has some meaning: historical or in languages, that are closed to our.

"Толкать" has a meaning to push, but "Толкач" is not very common family name. I was surprised, that Google know such persons. :-)

[mytza.livejournal.com]

Tolkach is the name of a former Russian ambassador here :)
Well, Google seems to be better at producing results when you search for Russian names or words in transliteration than in Cyrillic letters. By the way, don't you prefer Yandex?

[arvi.livejournal.com]

May be the ambassador has something Romanian in blood or karma. :-)

Google.ru, ya.ru (short for Yandex) and Rambler.ru are the best search engines in Russian Internet. I prefer Google, because its good everywhere. And, as you know "от добра добра не ищут".

[mytza.livejournal.com]

I can say for sure that His Excellency hasn't suffered any accident that would have constrained him to accept a transfusion here :)))

Yes, everything is googlable in this world... Still I prefer Yandex over Google when I want to search for Russian names, lyrics or events - especially since I discovered their blog search engine.
Thanks for "от добра добра не ищут" - I didn't know this expression :)

[arvi.livejournal.com]

Yah! Blog search engine is excellent on Yandex. Its great, you can integrate it (http://www.mozilla-russia.org/searchengines/) into Firefox.

[mytza.livejournal.com]

Super, indeed... And I who thought for a long time that the ever-present Google toolbar is the ultimate tool around, with its absurd list of blogs buttons... :))