Philip or Afanasiy

[RainbowBabyMum]

Hi
How would you pronounce Afanasiy?
Does it sound silly or too difficult to say?
I really like this name, but my husband prefers Philip and says that Afanasiy is silly name...
What do you think?

Forgive my ignorance but what origin is Afanasiy? I have never come across it before. Is it from a book?

Well I would say the names reflect slightly different tastes.

Tbo, am not overly keen on names that sound a bit made up. Would say afanasisy is definitely in that camp.

Philip is ok, a good solid name unlikely to date.

Not sure why you'd want to use a name that you don't know how to say but I'd guess at AFF-an-NAS-ee?

Afanisiy as in A fantasy??
Not keen. Actually, scrap that, beyond not keen. Sorry.

Philip is good though and much underused

It's Russian name, I know how it sounds in Russian, but my husband says it's not good for UK, so now I see, he was right.

Athanasius, I've heard of that. Probably a saint or a pope or similar. Bit out there though. I'd go for Philip.

Philip is a nice name and underused.

I would have no idea how to pronounce Afanasiy.

A-fan-issy?

I'd go for Philip. I reckon most people in the UK will have no idea how to pronounce Afanasiy. And before you said it was Russian, I thought it was a made-up name.

Do you have links with Russia?

Nicholas?

Philip is a decent name and Pip is a lovely nn.

Yes, we are both Russian
We think about Georgiy (George) or Pavel (Paul) as well....or mb Sevastian (Sebastian).

No offence but I haven't got a clue how to pronounce Afanasiy! I can't even spell it without checking back to your oringinal post! So I'd say its definitely a silly name,for here in the uk anyway,in russia I'm sure its a lovely name and rolls off the tongue but it will cause no end of spelling and pronounciation issues over here! Sorry!

So my vote goes to Phillip,if anything it will save the child from being bullied and teachers,ect having to work out how to say the other name,plus its a good solid name that can be easily spelt and pronouced in any language (I imagine anyway),especially if u intend on bringing him up here in uk :) its such an under used name here so you don't have to worry about it being common :) xx

Isn't Afanasiy Greek?
As in Atanasius? Or Athanasius?

Anyway, don't inflict that on the poor child.

Sebastian is also a lovely boys name so that or Phillip I'd say :) Perhaps have a russian name as a middle name? That way u can stick with ur heritage from russia as part of ur babies name as I assume that is importnant to u both but have a first name that will work well in the uk?xx

Yes, originally it's greek, there are a lot of Russian names, that came from Greece.
Thank you very much to all of you
Now I see my husband is right:)

I think Afanasy is a lovely name for Russian speakers (like me!). But for the majority of the U.K. population, it might be a bit difficult. I mean, it's not at all difficult to pronounce, but people might panic since they've never heard it before. Even more so if they see it written down. And your son would spend his life repeating his name. One of my personal criteria is a name that will not elicit the constant response of "What? What's your name?"

Fortunately, there are so many wonderful Russian names that are either easy to pronounce for English speakers or have an equivalent in English. Philip is a great name, as are the other possibilities you suggest.

Unfortunately we haven't got middle names, we have patronymic names.
(Patronymic names (Russian middle names) are derived from the name of the child's father ("patron"). If the child is a boy, the middle name will end in either -evich, or -ovich. If the child is a girl, the ending will be -ovna, or -evna.

For example, if the child is a boy, and the father's name is 'Aleksandr', then the child's middle name is Aleksandrovich. If the child is a girl, it would be Aleksandrovna. Likewise for the children of 'Sergey', which would be Sergeyevich (boy), and Sergeyevna (girl); or 'Mikhail', which would be Mikhailovich (boy), and Mikhailovna (girl))

It's very boring:( but I can't do anything with it. My children will have Ivanovich for their middle names.

yeah, and it's nightmare trying to fill in any forms.

I like it as a name myself - DH is Russian and it's one of the names he likes very much. But I think Philip is much easier in the UK. I think Philip Ivanovich sounds good, too, the repeated 'i' sound is very attractive.

Can't u break with tradition and just have a middle name of ur own choosing? Or will that cause far too much hassle from reletives back home?xx

I never knew that about patronymic names. How interesting!

I think Philip is nice but dull.

I think the UK is so multicultural now, Afanasiy would be fine.

I love the names Vladimir, Boris, Anton and Erik. They all work really well in English, and I presume, Russian.

MummyBurrows, probably we can, but in this case we are not sure that he will not have problems with Russian documents and what is more important for me- our eldest son (he was born in Russia) has patronimic name, so I think it's better for little-one to be like his brother.

Am now feeling very uncultured. The name has no similarity to anything I am familiar with, hence my assumption.

Very interesting though, that names can be so different. Didn't know about the patronymic names either.

It's Athanasius, as in the Athanasian Creed, which is very occasionally recited in churches.

But I'm struggling too to think of any remotely similar English name - I don't think we have one, do we? Or if we do it isn't common.