Sweetness Follows

Lamentably, Katyusha rockets are in the news again. Want to know what the name means? It's Russian.

In Russian, most nouns, and all proper nouns, have multiple diminutive forms. For example, if stol is the word for table, stolik means "cute, little table". Sometimes the diminutive form is the only surviving form of a word. For example, the word for a portable folding bed, raskladushka, literally means, "cute little thing that unfolds".

Names receive this treatment very commonly as well. In English, the diminutive form of "Catherine" is "Cathy". The same name in Russian is "Yekaterina" or, more familiarly "Katya". If your Katya is a particularly sweet little girl, you might call her "Katyusha". That's the literal name of the WW2-era rocket at the center of the current unpleasantness.

It's unlikely that the current weapons were actually made in Russia. "Katyusha" has come to mean any low-tech, unguided rocket fired out of a tube mounted on some kind of portable cart or vehicle. It's sort of like a Scud, except smaller.

There is another level of diminution possible with Russian names. If your Katyusha is really, really adorable - perhaps she's a small puppy - you might call her "Katyushenka". As far as I know, there is not yet a weapon with that name.

When I was a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, we were taught a famous song about the Katyusha rocket. Today, I can't get it out of my head.