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Origin of Sobolev surname

The owner of the surname Sobolev can rightfully be proud of his ancestors, information about which is contained in various documents confirming the trace left by them in the history of Russia.

The basis of the Sobolev surname was the worldly name Sobol. Such a name was joined by the parents of the child to the name received by him at baptism. This name was used more often than the baptismal one and was assigned to a person for life.

The presence of a second, secular, name was a kind of tribute to the ancient Slavic tradition of dual-name. Its purpose was to hide the main, church name from 'evil spirits' and 'evil spirits.'

The surname Sobolev is formed from the worldly name Sobol. Prior to the introduction of Christianity in Russia, the designation of a child with a name representing the name of an animal or plant was a very common tradition. This corresponded to the pagan ideas of man about the world. Old Russian man, living according to the laws of nature, himself represented himself as part of it. Giving the baby such names as, for example, Wolf, Squirrel, Nightingale, Kalina, Sable, parents wanted nature to perceive the child as their own, so that the useful qualities that the chosen representative of the animal or plant world would pass to him.

However, it is possible that the surname is also based on the nickname Sable, which may have belonged to a sable hunter or fur trader. As you know, because of the beautiful, durable and expensive fur, sable was called the king of wild furs - 'soft gold', so this product was very much appreciated, and the person who mined or sold sable fur was a rich and prosperous owner.

The first mention of this worldly name dates back to the 15th century: Gregory Mikulich Sobol, Metropolitan nobleman, 1462; Sable Birilev, the beginning of the XVI century., Novgorod; Vasily Alekseevich Sobol, 1506; Sable Ivan Zheltukhin, mid-16th century .; Sobolevs, servants of the metropolitan house, XV — XVI centuries.

Already in the XV – XVI centuries in Russia, family names began to be fixed and passed down from generation to generation, denoting a person's belonging to a particular family. These were possessive adjectives with the suffixes -ov / -ev, -in, originally indicating the name of the head of the family. Thus, the descendants of a person who owned the name or nickname Sobol, eventually received the name Sobolev.

The practice of giving a person, in addition to the official baptismal name, one more, non-baptismal, was held until the 17th century. and led to the fact that surnames formed from worldly names accounted for a significant part of the total number of Russian surnames.

Since the process of forming surnames was quite long, it is difficult to talk about the exact place and time of the origin of the surname Sobolev. However, we can confidently say that it belongs to the ranks of the oldest Russian family names and can tell a lot about the life and life of our distant ancestors.

Sources: Dictionary of modern Russian surnames (Ganzhina I.M.), Encyclopedia of Russian surnames. Secrets of origin and meaning (Vedina T.F.), Russian surnames: a popular etymological dictionary (Fedosyuk Yu.A.), Encyclopedia of Russian surnames (Higir B.Yu.), Russian surnames (Unbegaun B.O.).

Generally an Ashkenazi Jewish last name concentrated in Eastern Europe and Russia, the name is derived from either Polish, sobol, meaning 'marten' or the Old High German, zobel, meaning 'sable'. Both of these words refer to martes zibellina, a small carnivorous mammal inhabiting Northern forests in Asia and Europe. The connection is thought to have originated with the attribution of nicknames to trappers and hunters in medieval Europe who would bring pelts of sables back from forests to sell.