Svetlana

Svetlana

Svetlana (Cyrillic: Светлана) is a common Orthodox Slavic feminine given name, deriving from the East and South Slavic root svet (Cyrillic: свет), meaning "light", "shining", "luminescent", "pure", "blessed", or "holy", depending upon context similar if not the same as the word Shweta in Sanskrit. The name was coined by Alexander Vostokov and popularized by Vasily Zhukovsky in his eponymous ballad "Svetlana", first published in 1813. The name is also used in Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia, Macedonia, and Serbia, with a number of occurrences in non-Slavic countries. In the Russian Orthodox Church Svetlana is used as a Russian translation of Photina (derived from phos (Greek: φως, "light")), a name sometimes ascribed to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (the Bible, John 4). Semantically, similar names to this are Lucia (of Latin origin, meaning "light"), Claire ("light" or "clear" in French, equivalent to Spanish and Portuguese Clara), Roxana (from Old Persian, "little shiny star, light"), and Shweta (Sanskrit, "white, pure").

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