Natashlia Romanoffva: What's In a Name
Like any professional spy, our beloved Black Widow has many faces (and haircuts). She also seems to have a lot of names. Ever wondered what’s the deal with that? Let your humble Russian speaker explain.
To start with, let’s go over the authentic Russian variants of the Widow’s first name. I’ll mark the stressed vowels in bold.
Natalia (Наталья) — the full formal form of the name.*
*Actually, there are two forms possible: Nataliya (Наталия) [pronounced: na-ta-li-ya] and Natalia (Наталья) [pronounced na-ta-lya]. The former has a ye olden days flavor, and the latter is your ordinary everyday Natasha.
Which brings us to:
Natasha (Наташа) — the most common shortened form of the name. In fact, so common that it has branched out and become a stand-alone name in the Western countries.
Now, let the fun begin.
Nata (Ната) — a shortened form of the shortened form. Used fairly often, slightly more familiar than the full shortened form.
Natashen’ka (Наташенька) — much tender, very familiar. Be careful with this one: it can sound condescending (if used by an old white guy, for example). Between close friends, though, it expresses some industrial-grade affection.
Natashechka (Наташечка) — almost like Natashen’ka, but with a dash of irony.
Natusya (Натуся) — no one but your parents (or grandparents) can call you that. In fact, no one should be calling you that, not even your parents (maaaaaybe grandparents). Trust me, if anyone calls our Nat this, they won’t stay alive for long.
This form can also, in families particularly fond of babytalk, devolve into the ultimate diminutive form Tusya (Туся), which will bring immediate violent death upon you.
Natalie (Натали) [pronounced na-ta-lee] — release les baguettes, someone’s going for French! Mostly used in a joking way.
Natakha (Натаха) — this is your Slav squat girl. She spits sunflower husks, gulps vodka like water, and will fuck you up with the neck of a broken glass bottle, which, by the way, is called rozochka [a little rose] in Russian and I think it’s beautiful.
As for the common English forms of the name:
Nat can be used in Russian as a vocative form of Nata, i.e., a shortened form of direct address, but not something you’d use when referring to a Natasha in third person.
Tasha is not something Russian speakers use to shorten Natasha, unless they want to be very extra.
Now let’s move on to Nat’s last name.
Here’s the thing about Russian surnames: they don’t actually end in -off in Russian. Here’s another thing about Russian surnames: they’re gendered, and most will have different male and female forms.
So, -ov is one of the most common suffixes for a Russian male surname. But, since Russian phonetics insist that the hard consonants at the end of the word are softened, it’s pronounced more like -of. Which led the West to transcribe the ending as -off.
Now, the female version of this suffix is -ova. No consonant softening here.
Thus, if Nat was born and raised in Russia by Russians, her surname should be Romanova (which is a pretty common Russian surname, which literally means “of someone named Roman”), a female version of the male surname Romanov. On the other hand, she could have changed her surname to Romanoff, which is a legitimate westernization of Romanov, when choosing to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. and cutting off her ties with Mother Russia (I’d do that, if I were her).
You think we’re done? Surprise surprise: Russian people have ONE MORE NAME to consider.
This third name is called a patronymic, and Nat’s patronymic MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. And no, it’s not exactly a middle name.
A patronymic is a common thing in all Slavic cultures and is formed based on the following pattern: the kid’s father’s name + gendered ending. Think Icelandic -son and -dóttir. Or something along the lines of the The Handmaid’s Tale naming system if you want to go all morbid.
A quick note on usage: in the Russian-speaking cultures, first name + patronymic is used as a formal form of address. This is what you’d call your teacher, your boss, your doctor, a character from Tolstoy’s novel, or maybe even a friend if you’re making a thing of being extra respectful (or just extra). Basically, you’d want to use this combo in the same situations where you’d use Mister/Miss Last Name in English.
Now, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier the shady Hydra doctor Arnim Zola calls Nat “Natalia Alianovna”. Seeing that -ovna is a female gendered ending, it would make Nat’s father’s name Alian, which is not a Russian name I have ever encountered. I mean, it probably exists, but it’s definitely not a common one.
But wait a minute. As much as we’d all like to pretend that The Avengers: Endgame never happened, there was that moment when Red Skull addressed Nat as “daughter of Ivan”. Trust me, Ivan is not and cannot be a form of Alian, so in this version Nat’s patronymic should be Ivanovna. (Also, the proper stress is Ivan.)
Dear Marvel, what the hell?
There’s a theory that Nat may have a biological father and a foster dad, which might explain why Dr. Zola and Red Skull have different information. And after all, if Bucky Barnes can have three different birth dates in the MCU, why can’t Nat have two different daddies?
