The year 2023 brought much reflection on my cultural identity as I processed the grief and the loss of my grandmother, Evgeniya (Zhenya) Sakharova. We were incredibly close, and while I was not named after her (or so the story goes), I am confident that having the same name brought us even closer. This August marks a year since her passing. In celebration of her life and my cultural roots, I am moving away from the name I accidentally took upon immigration to the U.S., “Jenny,” and shifting back to the Russian pronunciation “Zhenya.” 

You may wonder, “Well, what about Evguenia?” Long story short, Evguenia is just a formal/long version of the short variant, “Zhenya” (i.e., just like a “Robert” may become “Bob”). If you are into examples, here is some more information and an example of Evgenia Madveva, “the first female skater to win back-to-back world titles in 16 years since Michelle Kwan did so in 2000 and 2001, and is currently the only Russian woman ever to successfully defend her world title” (Wikipedia). 

I did not play an active role in my name selection during the immigration process and cannot offer much background on how I ended up with the spelling of “Evguenia.” Here is what I do know. I immigrated to the U.S. on December 25, 1999, when I was 11 years old. I honestly did not know what was happening and did not know any English. So how my name got spelled “Evguenia” (instead of Evgeniya) or why I became “Jenny” is more or less a mystery to me. I do not have a clear answer for you beyond a guess that no one (my parents included) knew how to spell my name phonetically. I can also tell you that my name was spelled in at least three different ways on my immigration paperwork, which resulted in confusion and wasted time during my undergraduate college application process. When I first moved to the U.S. and began school, my name brought me a lot of frustration as a child because it was misspelled, corrected, and mispronounced by my teachers and classmates. Looking back, this likely was fueled by the turmoils of middle school. This summer, I realized that it’s not that hard to pronounce, and I miss it dearly. 

In Russian, the name is spelled “Евгения Попова,” and the “short” name for that, whether you are a boy or a girl, is “Женя.” So, in English, this would be “Evguenia (Zhenya) Popova.” “Ж” or “Zh” can be strange letters/sounds for English speakers. Do rest assured; there is an English phrase that gets close to it, “to zhuzh (or fix) something up.” 

Here are some tools to assist with pronunciation:

• Evguenia - Ev-gen-iya (YouTube Link); Meaning of “Evguenia”: https://www.behindthename.com/name/evgeniya 

• Zhenya - J-ae-n-ih-aa (YouTube Link)

• Popova - Po-po-vaa (YouTube Link); Meaning of “Popova”: https://surnames.behindthename.com/name/popova/submitted (Note that this is a “female” version of “Popov”: https://surnames.behindthename.com/name/popov)

I’ve been “Jenny” for almost 23 years (since 2000)! So if you slip and call me “Jenny,” no problem. I might slip myself due to habits and autonomic typing. In those instances, I will likely catch the slip-up and redirect you to “Evguenia” or “Zhenya.”

Thank you for reading. I appreciate you for taking the time to learn more about my name. If you are interested in more information, here are some more of my thoughts and reflections: 

Sincerely,

Evguenia (Zhenya) Popova