Often you can meet statement The fact that the popular female name Svetlana was invented in the 19th century by the poet Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky, the author of the same name. Check if this is so.

The expanded version of history states that until the 19th century, the name Svetlana was absent in the saints and became a heating of the Orthodox name of Fotin. In addition, there are many sources where the author of the name is called not Zhukovsky, but his colleague and almost the same age Alexander Vostokov. Zhukovsky in these sources is simply called a popularizer.

Let's start with the issue of championship between two poets. Everything is simple here. Zhukovsky’s ballad was dated 1813. But the Vostokov ended the heroic poem "Svetlana and Mstislav" in 1802, then read his creation in the free society of lovers of literature, sciences and arts, and in 1806 Published his. So the Vostoks clearly ahead of Zhukovsky, and the reason for the occurrence of an error was apparently the wide fame of the second work. The name even became code nickname Zhukovsky in the literary circle "Arzamas".

Now let's turn to the shrines. In their modern ones publications Svetlana, Phototina and Photinia go through a comma, as one name. But in the saints for 1878, that is, much later than the time of the appearance of the poem, Mentioned Only Fotin. And this means that it was unrealistic to get the legal name Svetlana in Russia at that moment. And not only at that moment. Even in 1912, the “Church Herald” wrote: “In 1900, in the St. Synod, the Synod came from the petitioners of the petition for permission to name daughters named Svetlana, but St. Synod did not find reason to satisfy the indicated petitions, since Svetlana’s name in the Orthodox holy holy.”

A logical question arises: and then what was the popularity of the name Svetlana in the 19th century, how did it continue to live? The fact is that in 1822 the same name of Kavos appeared on the plot of Zhukovsky’s ballads, in 1846 - another, the authorship of Theophilus Tolstoy. Karl Bryullov painted the picture "Guessing Svetlana." And these are far from all examples of reflection in art.

And life did not lag behind. In 1857, the name Svetlana received a steam frigate, on which Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich later made a trip around the world. In honor of the arrival of Fregat in Vladivostok, the main street of the city began to be called Svetlanskaya. The same name in 1874 will find the oldest boarding house Sochi. As for people, here I had to dodge. For example, the bride of Vladimir Nabokov Svetlana Zivert, born in 1905, was named with a photograph at baptism, but no one could forbid her to call her Svetlana in everyday life.

Well, after the revolution, the saints ceased to be a barrier, and a lot of Svetlan appeared in the USSR. One of the most famous among the early ones is the daughter of Joseph Stalin Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926–2011). A somewhat belated step was to make a name to the Saints in 1943, when there was no longer the need for this.

Thus, modern Russian onomastics (science of names) believes that Alexander Vostokov came up with the name Svetlana. Previously, hypotheses were expressed that the name has ancient Slavic or Old Russian origin, but they were not confirmed. And only in one definition there is no one: the version of the direct translation of the oriental named Fotin is competing with the variant of origin from the word "light". And here, given the scarcity of the manuscripts remaining from the poet, we seem to never know the truth.