WRITING SLOVAK SURNAMES IN THE SLOVAK AND SERBIAN CONTEXTS

Abstract

Members of national minorities in Vojvodina have the right to add to the birth register their name and surname in their mother tongue (Slovak, in this case) beside the name in the official language, Serbian. For that reason it is necessary to know the rules of transcription from one language to another. The paper presents the transcription of Slovak surnames into Serbian, that is the way to adapt certain Slovak graphemes (ď, ť, ľ, ň, ia, ie, iu, ô, y) in the Serbian language. Every grapheme is illustrated with an example.

The second part of the paper presents the ways female surnames are formed in the Slovak language. The female surnames are formed by adding the suffixes -ová, -ská, -cká to the male surnames. In practice, however, there are certain deviations from the standard language.

In the third part of the paper we discuss how female surnames are used in practice. We list examples which illustrate deviations from the standard language under the influence of the Serbian language.