I've brought this up before, but the more Russian sources I read, the more strongly I believe Tatiana's dog's name was in fact Orti
po. Virtually all the Russian sources that directly quote archival documents use the "p" spelling, as do a few English sources. I find it hard to believe that so many different Russian-speaking editors looking at the original letters and diaries written by various members of the imperial family all could have made the same mistake.
Russian sources for "Ortipo":
Royal Sisters of Mercy (quoted in OTMA's letters & diaries)
Dnevniki Nikolaya II i Imperatritsy Aleksandry Fedorovny: 1917-1918Tsesarevich (quoted in Aleksei's 1916 diary)
Pered Rasstrelom (quoted in Alexandra's letters)
English sources for "Ortipo":
Complete Wartime Correspondence (quoted in both N&A's letters)
Vyrubova (quoted in Alexandra's letters)
Lili Dehn gives a similar alternate spelling: Artipo. Dehn is by no means a scholarly source like
The Complete Wartime Correspondence, but she (like Vyrubova) would have heard the dog's name spoken by the IF themselves, so I find her approximation particularly compelling evidence.
Letters compiled and posted on the main APTM site give both spellings: Alexandra is quoted using "Ortipo" and
Anastasia uses "Ortino." Anastasia's letters were obtained by Bob & Rob through a Russian research assistant who personally retrieved them from GARF -- however,
Royal Sisters of Mercy quotes some of those same letters by Anastasia, giving the spelling as "Ortipo," so something is clearly amiss. In fact, the only print sources I've been able to determine that support "Ortino" are French or English: Eugenie de Greece's
Les tsarevitch: enfant martyr, Spiridovich, and
Fate of the Romanovs.
For the record, neither Gilliard, Buxhoeveden, nor Massie seem to mention the dog by name.
This will likely ruffle a few feathers but IMO the majority of the evidence suggests that the "Ortino" spelling is a mis-transliteration, and
Ortipo is correct.
