Declension of names

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Declension of names: Marka Petrovića, but sa Anom Petrović

The lesson “Declension of loanwords” ended with a promise: the full system of proper names — surnames, women’s forms, place names — would get a lesson of its own. This is it. Names of people and towns are among the words you will use most in Serbia, and every one of them stands in a case. Saying Zovem se Ana “My name is Ana” is easy; saying “I talked to Marko Petrović” is not.

Men’s first names: the ending decides everything

Men’s first names come in four types — a consonant (with or without a fleeting a), -o, -e and -a — and the last letter tells them apart. The first three follow the first declension, like grad “city”; the fourth, in -a, goes over to the second declension, like žena “woman”.

A name ending in a consonant is a first-declension noun (Milan, Ivan, Nenad, Stefan). Its accusative equals its genitive, as with every masculine noun for a living being. Petar and Aleksandar lose the fleeting a (lesson “Fleeting a”). A name in -o behaves like the loanword auto: the final vowel counts as an ending and drops off (Branko, Darko, Zdravko, Mirko). A name in -e loses its vowel the same way (Đorđe — Đorđa, Pavle — Pavla), but the instrumental of Đorđe takes -em, because đ is a soft consonant. The vocative in the last column is the one you know from the lesson “Vocative of names & titles”.

The fourth type is names in -a: Nikola, Luka, Ilija, Sava, Nemanja, Aleksa. They decline like žena — they belong to the group of “men in the feminine declension”, together with tata “dad” and sudija “judge” (lesson “Irregular nouns”) — but everything that agrees with them is masculine.

Men’s surnames: -ić, -ov, -ski, -a

A man’s surname always declines. There are only a few types, and you can already decline all of them — you just need to recognise them.

Kiš, Kapor, Crnjanski and Njegoš in the table are writers: Danilo Kiš, Momo Kapor, Miloš Crnjanski and the poet Njegoš. Surnames in -ić end in a soft consonant, so the instrumental is -em, not -om. Surnames in -ov and -in, common in Vojvodina, look like possessive adjectives but decline like nouns, like grad. Surnames in -ski are adjectives and decline like adjectives (lesson “Adjective declension”): Crnjanskog, Crnjanskom, Crnjanskim, like novog, novom, novim. And a surname in -a declines like žena with masculine agreement: film Emira Kusturice, izumi Nikole Tesle (a film by the director Emir Kusturica, the inventions of Nikola Tesla).

Women’s first names and surnames: what declines, what stands still

The border is the last letter: a name in -a is an ordinary second-declension noun, like žena, and a name ending in any other letter does not change at all.

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Declension of names — cheat sheet

A proper name declines by its ending. Only a woman’s surname in a consonant and a woman’s first name not in -a never change.

Both alphabets decline the Serbian spelling: Šekspira / Шекспира, Džona / Џона. Particles never change (Ludviga van Betovena, Šarla de Gola); in a hyphenated name only the last part declines: Žan-Žaka Rusoa.

Towns and countries take u; mountains, islands, districts take na: na Zlatiboru, na Krfu, na Vračaru.

Possessives (-a → -in, whoever the owner; soft → -ev, hard → -ov): Marko → Markov, Đorđe → Đorđev, Nikola → Nikolin, Ana → Anin, Milica → Miličin, Petrović → Petrovićev, Tesla → Teslin. Never from two words: knjiga Marka Petrovića. Capitalised; adjectives in -ski are not (šekspirovska tragedija).