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OT: Slavic name question

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Sunday, January 11, 2004, 1:33
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?

-Mark

Replies

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Muke Tever <hotblack@...>
John Cowan <cowan@...>
Ph. D. <phild@...>