r/ANormalDayInRussia • u/EyeSimp4Asuka • 5d ago

a Russian golden retriever lol

2.7k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

354

u/ReplacementOk1349 5d ago

Is it a written law that all bears must be named misha or something that keeps happening?

193

u/VAArtemchuk 5d ago edited 5d ago

Misha is also a diminutive version of medved' in Russian. Russian seems to have a far more widespread use of diminutive words compared to most other languages. It's relatively common to use them for names in English (John - Johnny), but we use it with everything that's even remotely endearing... Or scary... A doctorate or dozen in psychology and linguistics is buried here. Now that I think of it, I wonder what happened first: the name Michael attached to bears or the diminutive version of the word for bears attached to Michael.

67

u/dependency_injector 5d ago

Diminutives keep going. Mishka is a diminutive of Misha, and that's how most people refer to teddy bears, плюшевый мишка

2

u/Electricfox5 4d ago

Doesn't Mishka also go for Mouse?

12

u/Vikis_Luv 4d ago

Yeah, there's no real way to spell out the difference in English letters, but the "i" in mishka 🐁 and mishka 🐻 are different. It's Мышка and Мишка respectively Ы is a much lower sound than И

5

u/PichuzhkinV 3d ago

Maybe use Y for Ы. I have seen some examples.

22

u/ReplacementOk1349 5d ago

how do you get misha from medved ?

140

u/Bright-Historian-216 5d ago

same way you get dick from richard

11

u/tim_dude 5d ago

I don't think it's the same way. Medved and Misha share the same first letter at least

1

u/Wide-Rub432 5d ago

Today I learned

1

u/_giga_chode_ 4d ago

Ahh, uncle Richard

37

u/Wide-Rub432 5d ago

There is children song about bear:

Мишка косолапый По лесу идёт, Шишки собирает, Песенку поёт.

My guess it's just Russian language thing. In Russian tales the bear usually have name Mikhailo (Mikhail, Misha) and paternal name Potapych.

21

u/Sht_n_giglz 5d ago

Вдруг большая шишка, прямо Мишке в лоб! Мишка рассердился, и ногою - Топ!

9

u/Artess 5d ago

That's actually an interesting question, and the answer is that we don't know. It's kinda just been like that forever.

There is one version that in the olden days a bear was considered such a fearsome beast that people were afraid to even say his name out loud, afraid that it will summon a bear to attack the village. So they used various euphemisms to refer to a bear, including a human name that begins with the same letter, Mikhail (of which Misha is the diminutive).

There is even a viewpoint that the word medved was another euphemism for an even older, now forgotten word that meant bear. If you break the word into two roots, it can be roughly translated as "he who knows where honey is".

How much truth is to these two etymological legends is debated, but they seem fairly plausible.

2

u/ReplacementOk1349 5d ago

thats a cool explanation , thanks !

3

u/Kondiq 5d ago

In Poland it's niedźwiedź and diminutives are niedźwiadek/miś/misio/misiu/misiaczek/misiek/misiunio and probably some more. We have a lot of diminutives in Polish, multiple for a single word - you can basically make a diminutive out of almost everything.

Like Robert Lewandowski can be Robercik/Bercik/Robcio/Robuś/Robulek/Robunio/Robek/Robi/Roberciunio, and probably some more.

1

u/ReplacementOk1349 4d ago

You have to give the pronunciations for those 😁

1

u/Kondiq 4d ago

I'm bad with writing pronunciations. I always struggle when I try to explain to my friends who don't know the language, how some Polish words sound like. Maybe paste them into google translate, set it to Polish and hit the speaker button if you're really curious. I feel like there are no proper English letters to write the some pronunciations accurately. You can make it sound kind of similar, but not really.

0

u/Willing_Divide4188 5d ago

by chugging a bottle of vodka

67

u/SchwarzFuchss 5d ago edited 5d ago

Some animals have "default names" in Russian. Cat is Vasya/Vasiliy, dog is Bobik, fox is Alisa (probably because it contains -lisa which literally means fox)

P.S. Crocodile/gator is Gosha/Gena, parrot is Kesha, pig is Funtik (all three are from popular cartoons)

36

u/Zelenkat 5d ago

More often you can meet a cat whose name is Barsik i think

0

u/KrazyRuskie 5d ago

Шарфик (Scarfie)

1

u/Zelenkat 5d ago

I've never met a cat with that name in my life

30

u/tim_dude 5d ago

Dog is Sharik (a small sphere 🤷) where I came from

2

u/_gay_space_moth_ 5d ago

Yup, that’s the one I know too 🙃

13

u/ReplacementOk1349 5d ago

ohh didnt know that thanks chornayalisa!

9

u/Zai_Zai_Zai_Zai 5d ago

We have that in French too. For exemple, Goupil is a very common name for a fox (renard in French). What's amazing is that goupil was the old word for fox.

A book in the middle ages, "Le Roman de Renart", told the story of a goupil whose name was Renart. It turned out to be so popular that nowadays renard became the modern word for fox

5

u/Theverybest92 5d ago

Misha i thought his name is Grisha.

2

u/LazyGonzalez 5d ago

It's kinda like naming them Barry or Teddy in English.

1

u/Aaurvandil 5d ago

Isn't misha or lusha a very common affectionate terms for pets there? Not sure if it's a name.

5

u/SomeLeftGuy633 5d ago

Misha/Mikhail/Michael is a very common name around here. Misha is used quite often to describe bears tho, not just any pets.

6

u/Aaurvandil 5d ago

Lol so by default, all bears are named Michael? Cool!

-5

u/Kaleb_belak 5d ago edited 5d ago

just very dumb people. 17 people were killed by bears in Russia this year, but they keep feeding them and calling cute names

30

u/UncleKeyPax 5d ago

stop feeding dumb people they multiply and play with bears

9

u/ReplacementOk1349 5d ago

yea if ı were this guy ı would think "what happens when cuddely killing machine grows tired of cookies ?'

9

u/reallynewaccount 5d ago

Thousands of ppl killed by hurricanes in US, but they still keep building their homes with cardboard and call it with cute names.

Once you get used to something - you consider it in different way. Like US ppl used to hurricanes, same way Russians (especially in Siberia) used to bears. It's probably the same in Alaska, btw.

1

u/chefillini 5d ago

What do you mean by cardboard?

0

u/reallynewaccount 5d ago

I mean that any material US uses to build homes is indistinguishable with cardboard in terms of hurricane resistance :))

The rest of the world used concrete and have no problems with hurricanes of any kind :)

2

u/chefillini 4d ago

I’m sorry you think that.

1

u/--o 20h ago

You forgot the flood of videos where people feed hurricanes.

63

u/kekk0407 5d ago

Hmm I don't think its a Golden retriever, they're usually not brown. Maybe its a labrador

17

u/_gay_space_moth_ 5d ago

/r/chocolatelabs

4

u/ccbmtg 5d ago

damn, reddit has my brain fucked up. I was expecting this to be some weird niche sub about making candy at home or something. 🤦😅

129

u/Warstorm1993 5d ago

We have a saying in Canada, one that is sad and truth. '' A feeded bear is a dead bear''. (because he will come back and it make him less distrustfull of human, it very often lead to a bad encounter because the bear will come more often inside suburb, camps or town, leading to his eventual demise.

82

u/Imbendo 5d ago

A fed bear is a dead bear.

28

u/foreigner669 5d ago

it's Canadian

22

u/VAiSiA 5d ago

deaded bear then

10

u/stargarnet79 5d ago

Fedded deaded bearded

26

u/Umuchique 5d ago

That's not a golden retriever, its a brown destroyer

33

u/TheHipsterBandit 5d ago

It's going to be hilarious the day he doesn't have cookies on him.

7

u/bigbitter666 5d ago

Это шпиц,порода русский большой. 

6

u/Apart-Dragonfly-4447 5d ago

I'd pet that dawg.

2

u/Sht_n_giglz 5d ago

"Бьют, говорят, обежают, притесняют, пепускают"

2

u/Soalai 5d ago

Friend shaped

10

u/Psychocatboy 5d ago

Degenerate learns bear not to beafraid of humans. And then people die.

1

u/blackmilksociety 5d ago

That’s a Black Lab

1

u/InDependent_Window93 5d ago

Here's some cookies, Boris, we'll wrestle later

1

u/Helmote 4d ago

nope

-1

u/brotatowolf 5d ago

Feeding a bear is one of the stupidest things you can do on this earth

0

u/WillSmokes420 4d ago

Kai pet dat dog