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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2477 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I fail to see how "Smirnoff" is significantly less Russian than "Smirnov". It's just an outdated transliteration of the same Cyrillic letter, pronounced in almost exactly the same way. Recall that JK Rowling chose to spell the name of a Slavic villain in Harry Potter as "Karkaroff", not "Karkarov". Likewise, "Bower" and "Kline" are not significantly less German than "Bauer" and "Klein".

Changing a surname's suffix from -ov to -off has been a common practice among older émigrés, -off reads as a smoother spelling in the English language. It's no different from an Irishman changing his surname from "Ó Domhnaill" to "O'Donnell". Like I said earlier, I don't mind retaining a subtle hint of Russian heritage, just that my name will at least sound Russian-American instead of that of a person who could've arrived here straight from the Urals yesterday.

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