ABSTRACT
Meet Svetlana, or Svetlana Vladimirovna (as colleagues at work and strangers call her), or Sveta (for friends and family), a successful public relations practitioner in Moscow, who holds a master’s degree from a highly prestigious university in Russia and who works as a director of corporate communications at a large Russian consumer goods company in Moscow. Svetlana Vladimirovna is a combination of the first and the middle name, which is commonly used in Russia as an official, respectful greeting. It includes a complete first name and the middle name of the person. In Russia, the middle name is the person’s dad’s name and a suffix to indicate whether this is a daughter or a son. And although Svetlana never thinks much about this traditional greeting in Russia, whenever she introduces herself to someone or is called by someone who does not know her well, one of the first things people learn about Svetlana is the name of her father, Vladimir (Vladimir+ovna—a suffix that indicates she is a daughter of Vladimir).
