IF's nicknames -- they weren't meant for us!

Quote from: Sarushka on February 05, 2008, 10:57:55 PM

Just because I find it interesting...

I hunted through Divnyi Svet this evening, which is one of the few places I recall running across traditional Russian nicknames in the IF's letters. Here are the only ones I've found in letters from Alexandra to her daughters:

"Olenka" - 4 Aug 1905, 11 Feb 1909, 16 Feb 1909, 16 & 17 Apr 1909, 4 Aug 1909, 8 December 1909
"Tatianochka" - 28 Feb 1910
"Mashenka" - 11 Mar 1910, 14 Mar 1910

Granted, this book certainly does not contain every the letter Alexandra wrote to her children, but the vast majority of the ones it does include address the girls by their given names. Interesting that Alexandra almost seemed to go through a couple nickname phases in 1909 and early 1910, isn't it? Even so, I think it's kind of funny that none of the nicknames that are used so often on the AP boards -- such as Olya, Olishka, Tanya, and Mashka -- appear in the empress's letters. Also, the GDss only signed their letters to their mother with their given names.

My personal assumption for the reason why she may have went through a nickname phase at that time was to hold onto her children still being that - children. Think about it - the only ones who have mentioned there are her three eldest children. Perhaps it was a way of still seeing them as children, instead of acknowledging yet that they're growing up. Most mothers do it, and considering that at the time, young ladies began dressing and doing their hair like adults when they reached sixteen, one only had a certain amount of time left before then to see their little girls as little girls. 1910 was the last year in which Alexandra Fyodorovna could've thought of Olga Nikolayevna as a little girl, as she'd have turned sixteen in late 1911. Anastasiya Nikolayevna was still young enough at that point not to be yet thought of as approaching adulthood, and Aleksei Nikolayevich was always her baby, but her elder daughters certainly were getting there. Maria Nikolayevna was likely reaching puberty around that point (we can't be sure, as everyone is different, but historically it usually happens anytime between the ages of ten and fifteen, give or take in some cases), and so she would be included in that with the elder two. Of course, we cannot know anything for certain, but that's my own personal assumption for why she may have gone through a nickname phase at that point.

In relation to the topic, I had never really given thought to their nicknames or diminutives. Since so many different sources had listed different nicknames for OTMAA, I never knew what to believe, and simply referred to them by their first names. I never really understood the importance of the patronym when I was younger (as I began studying the Romanovs when I was eleven), but as I got older, I realized that it was a proper way of referring to the children or any person of high class in Russia - typically we, as commoners (as I'm sure many of us would be), would probably have referred to them as, "Her/His Imperial Highness _____ _____ _____," but just the first name and patronym is proper enough, or at least far more proper than just their first names. When my sister and I discuss them, we just refer to them with their first names, because it's a mouthful to say the patronym for each in a verbal discussion, but when writing online, I always write the first name and patronym. The only time the nicknames come out of my mouth is when my sister and I discuss Russian nicknames and diminutives (as her in-laws are Russian, we do discuss the culture often enough).