Oleg

Oleg of Novgorod by Viktor Vasnetsov
Gender	Male
Origin
Word/name	Old Norse
Meaning	Holy
Region of origin	Eastern Europe
Other names
Related names	Olga, Helge

Oleg (Russian: Олег), Oleh (Ukrainian: Олег), or Aleh (Belarusian: Алег) is an East Slavic given name. The name is very common in Russia, Ukraine and Belаrus. It derives from the Old Norse Helgi (Helge), meaning "holy", "sacred", or "blessed". The feminine equivalent is Olga. While Germanic in origin, "Oleg" is not very common outside Eastern European countries.

Russian pronunciation

Олег (Oleg) is pronounced [ɐˈlʲek] in Russian. The English pronunciation of Oleg is based on the transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet, and overlooks three key features of the Russian pronunciation:

1. The stress is on the second syllable. In spoken Russian, the initial short unstressed 'O' is reduced to [ɐ], similar to the 'a' as in 'about'.
2. The 'л' (l) becomes palatalized to [lʲ] ─ that is, it gains a 'y'-like quality, and but is still most closely approximated by a plain English 'l'.
3. The word-final final 'г' (g) is devoiced to [k].

Thus, rather than "Oh-leg", the phonetically closest approximation of the Russian pronunciation of Oleg in English is the name Alec, but with stress on 'E'.

Ukrainian pronunciation

The Ukrainian pronunciation of the name 'Олег' is different from Russian, though the same Cyrillic letters are used in writing. Ukrainian 'Олег' is pronounced [oˈlɛɦ] and becomes 'Oleh' in English according to the transliteration rules.^[1]

Belarusian spelling and pronunciation

In Belarusian, the name is spelled and pronounced as "Алег" [aˈlʲeɣ] so that the first letter changes to "A" according to the Belarusian feature of akannye. The last letter is also pronounced differently, which renders the Latin transliteration 'Aleh'.

People named Oleg

Fictional characters

References