Non-Russian names: to decline or not to decline?

Question

Recently I was heckled by a fellow student of mine for saying "Я вижу Лору" (I see Laura). Since Laura (presumably) is not a Russian name, she insisted on "Я вижу Лора".

So when to decline, when not to?

We learned not to decline coffee (e.g. "торт с кофе"), but obviously you should decline Gin (e.g. "Коктейли с джином").

Is there any general rule at play here, or does one just have to learn it on a word-by-word basis?

Answer 1

You are right that Лора declines in Russian, and here are the rules (source: http://www.nazovite.ru/sklonenie/)

The following personal names decline:

• all names (masculine and feminine, Russian and non-Russian) which end in -а or -я. This is your case.

• masculine names which end in any consonant (согласный), including -й.

• Feminine names which end in -ь (мягкий знак).

  • For this last rule, there may be exceptions for some non-Russian names. For instance, the elven name Galadriel (Галадриэль) may or may not decline in Russian. Google finds that both "с Галадриэлью" and "с Галадриэль" are popular.

• all of these decline as other Russian nouns with the same gender and ending (окончание).

• the source doesn't mention it, but masculine names which end in -ь decline too. This can be checked with "Хорь и Калиныч" by Иван Тургенев or with French name Поль. See the wiktionary article about how these decline.

All other personal names don't decline. These are:

• masculine names which end in a vowel other than -а, -я
• feminine names which end in anything other than -а, -я, -ь

Simply:

1. -а, -я, -ь? Decline! (With some exceptions for non-Russian feminine names which end in -ь; see below for another exception)
2. Masculine and a consonant? Decline!
3. Anything else? Don't decline!

PS: one more exception: French names like Николя (Nicholas), which in French end in a silent consonant, do not decline.

Answer 2

To add to a more elaborate answer by user31264, in Russian almost all foreign nouns that happily fall under one of the usual declension patterns for masculine or feminine nouns do decline as if they were native Russian words. Namely:

• soft or hard consonant-ending masculine nouns.
• -а/-я, -ия-ending feminine nouns.

Works for names, too. Usually names and family names in -а/-я decline but there is an exception: when the final -a is stressed, foreign last names are indeclinable.