Female Names

[dezelina.livejournal.com]

Hi Everyone,  real quick question.

Do foreign female first names decline?  For example, Marion. 

Comments

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

only if they end in "a"

[oryx_and_crake]

"а" or soft sign

e.g. Руфь - Руфи (dative and genitive), о Руфи (prepositional)

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

interesting; i had never heard of a foreign girls' name which ended in "ь" before.

[1enchik.livejournal.com]

or "я"?

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

using the latin alphabet, if a name ended in a я in russian it would be written with the final letter as "a" anyway :)

[khathi.livejournal.com]

It depends on whether they fit into Russian grammatical paradigms. If they do, they tend to be declined even if official rules forbid so -- not only female names, but any word in general. For example, Russian word "пальто", adopted from French "paletot", officially doesn't decline, but in colloquial speech is freely declined as a neuter noun, even while French word is masculine.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Marion wouldn't, but Marina would.

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

Marina is not actually a foreign name ;)

[markushka.livejournal.com]

Take some girls' name from India, say Praveena, SriPriya ot whatsoever

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

What do they have to do with Marina? )))
But that's right, those are very likely to be declined.