Alejandro Davidovich Fokina

Tennis player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina has an incredibly unusual name that we just have to dissect.

The first part is quite obvious, Alejandro. Just your regular Spanish version of Alexander. Moving on.

Davidovich is where the complications begin, due to its Eastern European origins. Take Lev Davidovich Trotsky (you might know him as Leon). Even though it appears in the middle, Davidovich is not his middle name; it's his patronymic. Lev's father was named David. But Davidovich can also be a surname, and is often, but not uniquely, Jewish. (For example, Soviet artist Isaak Aronovich Davidovich.) As a patronymic, it's exclusively male, as the female version would be Davidovna. However, as a surname, it can apply to women as well. (Are you confused yet?)

Moving on to Fokina. Now here is where it gets really weird. The Russian surname Fokina is exclusively female. (One example is ballet dancer Vera Fokina, married to fellow dancer Mikhail Fokin.) See the difference? It would be linguistically absurd for a man to have such a name... it simply can't happen. Of course, Alejandro is not Russian, so it did. (We haven't clarified it even a little bit, have we?)

So here we go: since Alejandro was born in Spain, Davidovich is not his patronymic, it's part of his surname... which is made up of both his parents' surnames. (Some Spaniards just stick with a single; a more famous tennis player, Rafael Nadal, is really Rafael Nadal Parera. Some, like Alejandro, go by both.) His father if Eduard Davidovich, who is said to be of dual Russian-Swedish citizenship. (Some also think he might be Jewish, but there is no proof.) Alejandro's mother is another Russian, Tatiana Fokina, so he became "Davidovich Fokina".

We hope that clears it up!