Masha

In Russian, Masha (Маша) is a diminutive of Maria. It has been used as a nickname or as a pet name for women named Maria or Marie. An alternative spelling in the Latin alphabet is "Macha". In Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, "Maša" is a diminutive of "Marija" but can be a given name in its own right.

The Jewish name Masha (מַשה)[1] is of Biblical extraction. Tradition has it that the first Masha was named after a departed male named Moshe (Moses).

Other diminutives of Maria

There are a large number of diminutives (nicknames) in Russian for Maria beside Masha:

  • Marusya (Маруся)
  • Manya (Маня)
  • Manyunya (Манюня)
  • Manyasha (Маняша)
  • Mashunya (Машуня)
  • Mashuta (Машута)
  • Mashenka (Машенька)
  • Mar'ya (Марья)
  • Mashulya (Машуля)
  • Mashka (Машка)

Notable people

  • Masha Bruskina (1924–1941), Soviet partisan of the Minsk Resistance
  • Masha Dashkina Maddux, Ukrainian dancer
  • Masha Gessen (born 1967), Russian and American journalist and author
  • Maria Kolenkina, Russian socialist revolutionary of the late 19th century
  • Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova (1950–2003), Russian conjoined twins
  • Masha Lubelsky (born 1936), Israeli politician
  • Masha Ma, Chinese fashion designer
  • Masha Rasputina (born 1964), Russian pop singer
  • Masha (singer) or Masha Shirin (born 1990 or 1991), Latvian-born American pop singer
  • Marie Yovanovitch (born 1958), American diplomat who served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Ukraine
  • Maria "Masha Scream" Arkhipova (born 1983), lead singer of the Russian folk metal band Arkona
  • Maria Viktorovna (born 1986), Russian-American YouTuber and ASMR performer
  • Maria Vladimirovna "Masha" Alyokhina (born 1988), Russian political activist and musician.

Fictional characters

  • Masha, heroine of the Russian TV series Masha and the Bear
  • Masha, heroine of Pushkin's novel The Captain's Daughter
  • Masha, one of the title characters in The Three Sisters (play) by Anton Chekhov
  • Masha, Ilya's and Polina's daughter in The Seagull, another Chekhov play
  • Masha, in the Tokyo Mew Mew manga series
  • Masha Rostova, Elizabeth Keen's birth name in the TV series The Blacklist
  • Masha, part of Elizabeth's entourage in the film Young Frankenstein
  • Masha, obsessed fan in The King of Comedy (1983) played by Sandra Bernhard
  • Marya "Masha" Morevna, main character in Deathless, a retelling of Russian folklore
  • Maria "Masha", title character in Hayden Kopser's novella Masha (2021)
  • Masha Dmitrichenko, in the miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers, based on the novel of the same name

References

  1. ^ "Where Does the Jewish name Masha Come From?". www.chabad.org. Retrieved 2017-06-12.
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