Hi — looking for some quick help here…
Last name “Vujanic”. East European, I’m fairly certain either Czech or Serbian.
I’d been pronouncing it the way it would be in the US, Voo-jann-ik… but I think I’m off here?
Someone will be along with better knowledge than me, but I would pronounce it Voo-yan-ich. My wife, who lived in Slovakia doesn’t think it is Czech, but more likely from the former Yugoslavia.
I’d pronounce it similarly, as voo-YAH-neech. (With the final “ee” sound is somewhat between a short “i” and long “i” in English.) The name looks Serbian/South Slav rather than Western Slav to me.
If it were Czech, the pronunciation would probably be VU-yan-its, but I don’t think it’s Czech. Czech names generally correspond to a “name day,” or svátek, which is sort of like a little birthday for you and everyone who shares your name, and that’s not on the list.
It’s a surname, not a given name, so it wouldn’t be on the name day list.
D’oh! I misread and thought it was a given name. Still, I don’t think it’s a Czech surname either; it doesn’t look Czech or translate to anything in Czech.
I agree. Names that end in “-ic” (or more properly, “ić”) tend to be South Slavic, meaning Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian. But you have similar endings in Belorussian, Polish, even Hungarian (which are usually written as “-icz”, “-ich”, or “-ycz” for the first two, and “-ics” for the last one). For whatever reason, it seems that the Czechs and Slovaks don’t have some variant of this ending in their language–at least not commonly.
Anyhow, looking at the name “Vujanic”, it just looks like a typical Yugoslavian name to me, and, looking online, it seems most of the Vujanices come from either Serbia or Croatia.
Most likely both - the difference between the two is largely semantic ( well, confessional, which amounts to about the same thing ). My family name is technically Serb ( anglicized with an added “h” at the end ), but you’ll find it among Croats as well. My family came from Croatia and ethnic identity in that area, at least until recently, was pretty fluid.
Yeah, well as said Serbian or thereabouts as a distinct possibility. So, perhaps more like “Voo-yan-itch”, then?
Yep, although the “a” in the middle syllable should be an “ah” rather than the “a” in “yam” or “cat” (at least how most American dialects pronounce those words.)