Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Why does Michael Ignatieff's name end in -ff?

The surname Ignatieff is Russian. There is no double F in Russian.

Michael Ignatieff's Russian-born father spelled his name Игнатьев in Russian, and the standard English transliteration of the Cyrillic в is V.

So how did it end up being Ignatieff instead of Ignatiev, or even Ignatief?

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