The surname Bondarenko is not so rare. In the old days, it was most common in the Ukrainian lands and in the Kuban. However, in the last century, the territorial boundaries of surnames have blurred, the ability to move freely around the world has mixed peoples. Now the Bondarenko family can be found in every corner of our country and even abroad. What is the origin of this ancient surname?
A trip to history
Any surname is a kind of generic name, reflecting the occupation of the family or some feature that the ancestor became famous for. In ancient times, a person, in addition to his own name, always had a nickname, by which people immediately understood what to expect from a new acquaintance. If the family owned some kind of craft, then all its members, regardless of their own name, were often called by it.
The history of the Bondarenko surname is connected with a very respected profession in the old days - barrel making. Bondar in Russia was called a master who makeshoopware.
Eastern Ukrainian roots
Barrels, tubs, tubs in the peasant economy required a lot. So the case for the cooper and his sons was always there. The master himself was usually called simply by his profession. But the students and apprentices, and then just the descendants, were called out with an already changed word, to which was added a syllable indicating affinity. Depending on the dialect, this suffix sounded differently:
- In central Russia -ov, -ev and -vich (e.g. Bondarev).
- Chuk in the north of Ukraine.
- In the lands under Polish rule, surnames ended in -sky (Zalessky, Kovalsky, Bondarsky, etc.).
- In the former territories of Pereyaslav and Chernigov principalities, the suffix -enko was used as a designation of affinity. Accordingly, the origin of the name Bondarenko is Eastern Ukrainian.
Nationality of last name
There are no "pure" languages in the modern world. Each has a sea of borrowings, and many of them have entered everyday speech so long ago that they are no longer perceived as foreign. Such words are no longer used in their original meaning, but serve as roots for other terms. So it happened with the name Bondarenko. Its origin and significance are rooted in such deep layers of history, where Russia did not even exist within its modern borders. Therefore, an attempt to understand the etymology of the word turns into a real linguistic study.
It would seem that withthe origin of the name Bondarenko is clear. But the question arises: why exactly “cooper”, if according to the rules of the Slavic languages it would be more correct to call such a master a “barrel”? By the way, there really was such a profession in Russia, but its emergence or, more precisely, isolation dates back to a much later period. Unlike the barrel maker, the cooper made not only barrels, but also other wooden utensils with hoops or braid.
This is where the clue is hiding. The German word binden means "to knit". Accordingly, a binder is a person who knits something. The same root can be seen in the name of the fishing net - "bindyuga". So a cooper is a master who makes wicker or hooped dishes. From time immemorial, the ancient Slavs lived next to the Germanic peoples, and many tribes, such as the Bodrichi, Lutichi and Prussians, fell under the rule of their western neighbors and gradually "Germanized". It was in these lands, according to some researchers, that the word "cooper" appeared.
In the footsteps of the ancient language
It turns out that the origin of the name Bondarenko is German? Not so simple! As linguists have long proven, all the languages of the Indo-European group, including Russian, English, French, German and others, have a common root. All of them originated from Sanskrit and are related. In the 60s, the famous Indian linguist Durga Prasadhu Shastri visited the Soviet Union.
He was shocked that most of the words (more precisely,all primordially Russian, not borrowed words) he understood without translation. He claimed that Russians speak an archaic and somewhat distorted version of Sanskrit.
If I were asked which two languages of the world are most similar to each other, I would answer without any hesitation: Russian and Sanskrit. And not because some words in both languages are similar, as is the case with many languages belonging to the same family. For example, common words can be found in Latin, German, Sanskrit, Persian and Russian, belonging to the Indo-European group. It is surprising that our two languages have similar word structure, style, syntax and grammar rules.
Thus, we can say that the origin of the name Bondarenko is Proto-Indo-European. And the age of this surname is calculated not in centuries, as was commonly believed, but in millennia.
Jewish surname
In the 17th-19th centuries, many Jews appeared among Bondarenko. Of course, it would be wrong to say that this surname has Semitic roots. But the fact remains that when a wave of Jewish pogroms swept through the Polish and Ukrainian lands in the 1600s, many Jews began to try to assimilate as much as possible. First of all, this was expressed in the choice of a surname that did not cause hostility among the local population. Most often these were the names of respected professions. In Ukraine, Jews often chose the surnames Bondarenko, Kovalchuk (“koval” means “blacksmith”), Tkachenko, etc.
