Irina

Irina
Pronunciation Ee-ree-na
Gender Female
Origin
Word/name Bulgarian
Russian
Albanian
Romanian
Greek
Ukrainian
Meaning Peace
Other names
Related names Irene
Arina
Look up Irina in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Irina (Cyrillic: Ирина) is a variant of Irene, being a Cyrillic-transliterated Christian Orthodox feminine given name of Greek origin, and the variant adopted by most followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The name Irina is derived from the ancient Greek goodess of peaceful life Eirene. In Ancient Greek εἰρήνη means peace. It has namesakes.

Forms

Due to a difference of pronunciation in Ukrainian (Ukrainian: Ірина) and the rest of Cyrillic-based languages, the name has the forms “Irina” and “Iryna”. Note that until 1860s, Romania, a predominantly Christian Orthodox country, used the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, and that after switching to the Latin alphabet it has adopted the Orthodox version of the name over the Catholic “Irene”.

There is another form, Arina.

Diminutive forms in Slavic languages include Ira, Irinka, Irinushka, Irisha, Irka, Irochka, Irinochka, Irishenka.

Origin

Irina is connected with Irene of Macedon (I-II century) who was the first woman recognized by the church as a great martyr. She was born pagan as Penelope and later baptized by Saint Timothy as Irene.

People bearing given name Irina

Nobility and politics
Arts and music
Actreses and models
Sports
Other

Fictional characters

Geography

See also

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, April 17, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.