5 ms·

Smuggling tip: On a Slavic passport, if your last name ends in ova, it says you're female.

• patates 10y ago
  Interesting... So one's surname changes according to their gender?
  • ktt 10y ago
    Exactly but not for all surnames. See: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-in-Russian-culture-a-womans-last-name-must-end-with-the-letter-A?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-in-Russian-culture-a-w...
  • bontoJR 10y ago
    Yes, exactly, in fact I thought he has been caught because of that, not about the credit card thing... Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_name#Female_surnames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_name#Female_surnames
  • stratocumulus 10y ago
    Only the endings, for example the feminine form of Novák becomes Nováková. When moving to a country where there's no distinction, one usually stays by the masculine form in the official documents, regardless of gender. For example, an American-born daughter of Polish immigrants inherits and uses Kowalski as her last name, but if she were born in Poland, she would use the form Kowalska (and her son would be called Kowalski, etc.)
    • pavel_lishin 10y ago
      I'm Russian, and it's very jarring sometimes to meet or read about the daughter of immigrants who has a traditionally Russian name, but keeps the masculine last name. (e.g., Katerina Ivanov - which sounds really strange due to the gender mismatch.)
  • chillydawg 10y ago
    If you come from a place where you surname is simply FathersnameSon or FathersnameDaughter, then yes. Eg: Bjornson or Einarsdottir (sorry Scandi friends for typos)
    • patates 10y ago
      Well, I actually come from such a place. In Turkey it's not uncommon that a surname ends with "oğlu", meaning "son of X" where surname is the form "Xoğlu". Because of "reasons", there are no surnames ending with "kızı" ("daughter of") though - at least I've never came upon one. Also, we never change them, even if the holder is not male.
      • vidarh 10y ago
        > Also, we never change them, even if the holder is not male. They got "frozen" in most languages once written records got widespread enough that it became common to want to be able to cross-index registers and track family relationships. It varies by country, but often it coincides with the introduction of tax authority registers or other large national databases.
      • NetStrikeForce 10y ago
        Funnily enough, this is more widespread than one would think. I didn't know about the Turkish example. In Spanish, all the surnames ending in -ez also mean "son of". Even many Spanish speaking people don't know (or don't care? :)) about it, as they've been used as "normal" (sorry) surnames for long now. Lopez: Son of Lope Rodriguez: Son of Rodrigo Perez: Son of Pedro Martínez: Son of Martín etc
        • magic_beans 10y ago
          I had no idea!! Was there ever a "daughter of" convention? I love when etymology pops up in random threads :)
          • NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  • pskocik 10y ago
    Czech (his passport) changes endings all over the place. It's how our grammar works. Nouns and adjectives have different endings depending on their contextual gender associations. Czech last names are either adjectives (rarer), in which case the male form ends with ý and the female form ends with á (the latter generally denotes femininity), or nouns, in which case the female form gets turned into an adjective with the ová ending. For example, if your last name is Kovář == Smith, your wife's or daughter's last name would be Kovářová, which could be loosely translated as "of Smith" or "of Smith material" (Kovářka would be the Czech noun for "a female Smith", but female noun surnames don't turn up in formal Czech -- though they make reasonable abbreviations/nicknames among friends). Czech has also the very similarly sounding ova ending (as opposed to ová) which literally denotes possession in addition to the female gender (Kovářova == a (male) Smith's). This doesn't turn up in Czech last names, but it does in other Slavic last names (notably in Russian last names), which makes it sound familiar. Whether it also denotes possession in those languages, I don't know.
  • falsedan 10y ago
    First names, too, see Valērija/Valēris in Latvian (male names -s, female names -a). Same for family names. After we were married, my wife's family name changed to 'match' my non-Latvian name, and our son got a different family name on his LV passport. e.g. John Smith <-> Jana Smitha | v Josefs Smiths/Joseph Smith We use the LV passports for primary ID, which sometimes causes some confusion when setting up family accouts etc. with non-passport-control staff.
• charlesdm 10y ago
  Smuggling tip: don't use the same credit card to buy 20 tickets. I was surprised he got through so easily. Good for him, though!