Why are some Russian names not used by Jews, and others are? [closed]

Question

A (Hebrew) article at https://he.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2096985 mentions, incidentally, this detail (translation mine):

“What's with this name Vasily?” he thought to himself.

Now, there are a lot of Russian names that come from Jewish ones, or at least have some kind of Jewish connection. Jews in Russia bear names like Misha, Sasha, Boris, Vladimir, Igor—names reminiscent of Moshe, Baruch, Zev, Asher, etc. But “Vasily”? That’s a true-blue gentile name; not many Jews bear it.

So I'd like to know: what indeed makes certain names more or less likely to be used by Russian Jews? It's not just the etymology, since neither Boris nor Vladimir nor Igor come from Hebrew or (as far as I know) have any Hebrew/Jewish antecedents. I don't suppose it has to do with whether these are saints' names, either, seeing as how there's a St. Boris and a St. Vladimir. And if it's just the phonetic similarity of the beginning of the name - then why is Vladimir, which would pair up with the Jewish name (Zev) Wolf and its diminutive Velvel, more preferred than Vasily?

Answer 1

Well, all the Jews in Russia historically had Jewish names. But, to make it more pronounceable for the Russians, all the foreigners got Russian or Russian-sounding names and patronymic names, besides theirs. It was a part of what is called обрусение. But still, it was not a 100% case. Many Jews had only Jewish names, with a patronymic name derived from the Jewish name of the father. Just the local tradition of pronunciation tinted the names.

E.g., Мара Меировна, Наум Лазаревич. Pay attention I haven't given surnames here.

I think that Василий just sounds perfectly Russian. Just as Марк sounds traditionally Jewish, though this name is not present in Torah, but there are many Russian Jews with this name.

Борис resembles Борух, usually it's the same person.

Илья is the Russian pronunciation of the prophet's name.

Миша resembles Моше, but Михаил can be either Мойша or Хаим.

But sometimes people just choose a name which they like and can turn from Цадик Израилевич to Евгений Борисович. It's less predictable than you might expect. I'd say, that it was also a kind of Jewish tradition which Russian name to choose.