Re: OT: Slavic name question

Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
> Alex Lifeson, guitarist for the Canadian band Rush, was in the
> news recently for a contretemps he got into in Italy (apparently
> involving fisticuffs with the local gendarmes - always
> such a smart idea).
>
> The news reports included his real last name, which they spelled
> 'Zivojinovich'.  Now, the whole of my Slavic knowledge comes from
> a year of Russian I took in college, and Lifeson isn't of Russian
> descent, but Yugoslavian.  From his stage name-gloss "Lifeson" I would
> construct a Russian version of his name as "Zhivojnovich"
> (zh, i, v, o, i kratkoe, n, o, v, i, ch), a pseudo-patronym based on
> the adjective "zhivoj" "alive".
>
> So, my question: in Yugoslavian, does the cognate have a /z/ instead
> of a /Z/, or is it just a case of odd transliteration?

The Serbo-Croatian root for "alive" is "zhiv" ("ziv" with hacek over the z).

"Life" is "zhivot" ("zivot" with hacek).