Over a century after the the French revolution influenced French baby names, the Russian Revolution (and socialist ideology) inspired a handful of Russian parents to give their babies similarly patriotic names.

Here are some examples of those patriotic baby names. Most were bestowed in the 1920s and 1930s, though some (like Uryurvkos) popped up decades later.

Other baby names of the era weren’t as political as they were fanciful, e.g., Atlantida, “Atlantis”; Monblan, “Mont Blanc”; Traviata for the Verdi opera; Zvezde, “star.”

It’s also interesting to note that a portion of these parents went in the other direction entirely. Instead of opting for progressive names, they went for “pre-Christian Slavic names such as Mstislav or Sviatopolk that had fallen into disuse in modern times.”

Sources:

Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 (1997): 272.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, via World Press Review 30 (1983): 14.

Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

White, Stephen. Political Culture and Soviet Politics. New York: Macmillan, 1979.