where they ask for your nationality to enter it into an official document
The child went unnamed for a month. It turned out not to be so easy to choose a name from the shortlist: "Yegor - Zakhar - Boris." The grandmothers were fiercely lobbying for various Sashas and Maksims. My daughter insisted that her little brother absolutely had to be Seryozha or, better yet, Blaine. At the registry office (ZAGS, the civil records office), I asked: what names are the most popular these days? The woman laughed and replied: Definitely not Zakhar. It turned out the most popular names are Arseny, Maksim, and Timofey. And in general people have really been gravitating toward old-fashioned, plain-Russian names. So Zakhar is also, in a sense, mainstream. There’s even a Makar in the courtyard next door. Actually, the ultimate flashy name is Taras. Unfortunately, it’s completely impossible to name a child that because of the obvious rhyme — he’d get teased. The only problem with Zakhar is that it’s unclear what the diminutive should be. Zakha sounds kind of Chechen. You can’t exactly call him Kharya, either. Unless maybe Khoryok.
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