“A habit has been given to us from above ....”, - wrote the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin in his famous novel in verses “Eugene Onegin”, but where did the habit of calling people not only by name, but by last name come from? Alas, neither Pushkin, nor Lermontov, nor any of the poets gave an answer to this question. Historians, or rather, genealogists and scientists involved in investigating the origin of the genus, the history of the family, and the etymology of the family name, solved this problem.
We will stay today in the role of genealogy scientists and try to answer the question of where the name Vlasov came from.
What is a surname and where did it come from
Before you understand the origin of the name Vlasov, where it came from, you first need to understand how the names appeared in general.
People didn’t always have surnames. They appeared in connection with the need to indicate a person’s belonging to a certain family (for example, when determining the order of inheritance) and were given only to noble families. As a rule, the surname was either the nickname of the eldest in the family, the head of the family, or his personal name. Gradually, it took root in the consciousness of the environment and firmly “grew” to representatives of a particular family. So the names began to be inherited. Now the surname is the name of the genus, which is transmitted along the male line.
Vlasov and hair - what is the connection?
It may seem to many that the name Vlasov is somehow connected with the word hair, and this explains its origin. To confirm this version, you can even attract linguistics to help. After conducting a linguistic analysis, you will find out that the word “Vlasov” has a disagreeing combination “la” inherent in the Old Russian language, but in the word “hair” there is a complete consonance “olo”, which is typical for the modern Russian language (exactly the same process you you will see in the words “gold” - an outdated version, and “gold” - the modern equivalent of the word). Well, the kinship between the two words is confirmed and justified! But do not rush to rejoice, beginning geneologists, because there is such a thing as a false etymology in the Russian language. This phenomenon means that not every word can be explained by similarity with another, sometimes this way of finding out the etymology can lead us on the wrong track (as happened with the attempt to find out where the name of Vlasov came from). Therefore, always test your intuitive guesses.
Historians single out only one, the only true version of the origin of the Vlasov surname. Read about it further.
Origin of Vlasov name
In fact, the family name Vlasov has a story quite typical of Russian surnames and originates from the personal male name Vlas. Yes, this may not occur to us right now, since the name Vlas is quite rare in the modern world (it was not common in Russia either), therefore it is more difficult for us to connect the origin of the Vlasov surname with the Vlas name than in a situation, for example, with Petrov or Ivanov.
So, the name of Vlasov is formed on the personal name of Vlas using the common suffix "ov", which means belonging to someone. Affiliation, after all, initially the surname had the value of belonging to a particular person (the owner of the house, the head of the clan, its founder). Moreover, for the full expression of this meaning, a concretizing word was also added earlier, denoting a kinship with this person (Ivan Vlasov son, Peter Vlasov grandson, and so on). Such a surname essentially performed the functions of a middle name before.
The value of the surname Vlasov
One of the oldest representatives of the surname is Evstafy Ivanovich Vlasov. In the seventeenth century he came from Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) to Moscow, where he was granted the title of nobility by Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. In total, over the history of the monarchy in Russia, there are twenty-seven different (and perhaps somehow connected) noble families under the name of Vlasov. Who knows, maybe it's not just your namesakes, but distant ancestors?
And yet, despite the pomp of this story, the meaning of the name Vlasov is very simple, moreover, in the most literal sense. The fact is that the meaning of a surname can be understood on the basis of the meaning of the name from which it is formed, and the name Vlas, or Blasius, a more traditional and archaic version, is translated from ancient Greek as "simple, thick, clumsy."
Synonyms in meaning and identical in origin (namely, derivatives on behalf of Vlas) will be the Ukrainian surnames Vlasenko, Vlasyuk - other suffixes characteristic of the Ukrainian language are simply used for their formation. You can also find similar surnames in Belarus, Poland - where the name Vlas was common in ancient times.