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When I was being adopted from an orphanage my mom claims that on several occasions, when calling for my little brother I called him by a nickname. I don't know how to spell the word or what it means I just know how to say it. I would call him something along the lines of Sideosha. That's the only way I can think to spell it as that is how it's pronounced. Any help would be greatly appreciated as it's been driving me nuts for years.

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    Which syllable is stressed in Sideosha? Can you think of an English word that has the vowel which you rendered as eo? Apr 26, 2017 at 8:33
  • Strangely, the definiteness only appears after the brilliant answer by a user with perfect pitch :)
    – Alex_ander
    Apr 26, 2017 at 20:19

2 Answers 2

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Most probably, the name is Seryozha (Серёжа), which is the diminutive of Sergey (Сергей).

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    English D and Russian R are often mistaken for one another. E.g. the song "She's got it" (Venus) is known as Шизгара (Shizgara) in Russia: ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus Apr 26, 2017 at 8:42
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    Also, small kids usually cannot speak the Russian "Р" properly. From all Russian letters, "Р" is the hardest to pronounce for kids ("Л" is probably the second hardest), so they learn to pronounce it properly later than other letters.
    – user31264
    Apr 26, 2017 at 9:11
  • @SergeySlepov Why "English" D? It's the same phoneme - [d] - in both languages.
    – Dmiters
    Apr 27, 2017 at 7:05
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    @DmitryNarkevich, English "d" and Russian "р" are pronounced with the same position of the tip of a tongue, while in Russian "д" it has another position.
    – Lara
    Apr 27, 2017 at 12:28
  • @Lara Oh shoot you're right, it'd [d̪] in Russian.
    – Dmiters
    Apr 28, 2017 at 22:55
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Another (admittedly less likely) possibility would be that the name is a diminutive form of Сидор. While I'm not aware of a standardized diminutive form for that name, kids make up the darndest things.

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