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Russian name for a character?
I have a character named Alistair, but his parents were fantasy-Russian and wouldn't have named him that. I've been saying he changed it as an adult when he moved to fantasy-North America (as did his brother Cyrus, formerly Kir), but I looked into it and found out there's no Russian version of Alistair, and it's actually just a small offshoot of the Alexander name tree. I had no idea! I feel like it's a bit of a stretch to use its closest Russian relation of Aleksandr, since it's still not that close and doesn't sound very similar, but I really don't want to change his name to the far more obvious option of Alexander (or anything else, for that matter; I'm rather attached to it). What sayeth you guys? Is Aleksandr to Alistair really as flimsy of a bridge as I think? Is there some other solution I've overlooked? (I could just forgo mentioning what it used to be, except that I am incapable of writing stories that do not involve copious amounts of time travel, and thus there are several chapters where he shows up as a kid/teenager.)
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Aleksandr to Alistair makes sense, IMO.
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Maybe he took the name in honor of someone else? A friend of the family, a person with the name, they changed it so it didn't seem as ethnic?
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Since it's fantasy-Russia and not real-world-Russia, I think you could just go with a Slavic-inspired name.Some ideas of what Alistair could come from (some of which are Russian anyway)Alyosha
Aleksey / Alexei
Alyosta
Alaistyr
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What about Alexei? I feel like Alexei would translate to Alistair a bit more easily, especially because he would often have been called Alyosha rather than Sasha. Alyosha - Alistair... but either way, maybe he chose Alistair because he heard it somewhere and liked it.
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