And now it's time for more stupid questions

[zhirafov-nyet.livejournal.com]

So I recently discovered the meaning of my surname (Dörfler); it means "villager" or "peasant" (yeah, isn't that a wonderful name to have?). Now, unless I'm mistaken, many Russian surnames are derived from nouns, are they not? If this is indeed the case, then I'm wondering: is there a Russian equivalence of Dörfler?

Comments

[alon_68]

What's connection to Russian? It's obviously the German surname.
Many Russian surnames are indeed derived from nouns using suffixes "-ов" or "-ин", like Кузнецов from кузнец (blacksmith), Попов from поп (colloquial for clergyman), Купцов from купец (merchant), but крестьянин, селянин (peasant) was too common occupation to identify a person. There can be surname like Крестьянинов, but I doubt it's too popular :)

[zhirafov-nyet.livejournal.com]

Крестьянинов is kind of common though. And I never said anything about a connection to Russian. I was just wondering if a name with a similar meaning existed in Russian.

[ex-tritopor.livejournal.com]

May be "Крестьянкин", but it's quite rare surname.

[zhirafov-nyet.livejournal.com]

Apparently, only one person had it. Google came up with 38300 hits for it, but they all seem to be about Иоанн Крестьянкин.

[perfect-drugg.livejournal.com]

крестьянин, земледелец, селянин, деревенщина 8)

[innyaka.livejournal.com]

villager
сельский житель; крестьянин

peasant
1) крестьянин, сельский житель
2) depreciatingly деревенщина
3) slang мошенник, плут

[atranotte.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe Крестьянин, Крестьянкин, but I've never known people with such surnames :)

[siberian-cat.livejournal.com]

Селянинов is quite popular.

[basile.livejournal.com]

Google search (http://google.com):
Селянинов: 11400 matches;
Крестьянинов: 25800 matches.

[zhirafov-nyet.livejournal.com]

Крестьянинов was what I came up with after playing around with words and endings, and it seems to be fairly common.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call it exactly "common": my own last name, Мошков, is not very common, and Google returns 229,000 hits for it. Compare it with 5,110,000 hits for the most common Russian last name, Смирнов. Крестьянинов is not common, it's rare, but it's possible.