The Kandinsky surname, like many other Russian (and not only Russian) surnames, is a so called toponymic surname, i.e. a word which has a geographical place name in its origin. Among such surnames are Novgorodtsev (from Novgorod city), Eltsin (from Elets city), Ustiuzhanin (from Veliky Ustiug), Sibirtsev (from Siberia), Volzhanin and Volgin (both from the Volga), etc.

In the XVII-th century they used to spell the «Kandinsky» surname with an «o» in the 2-nd position: «Kondinsky». Up to now there are people called «Kondinsky» in Russia.

So, as I have already said, my surname has a toponymic origin, it descends from the name of the river Konda. Actually there are two rivers with such a name:

1. Konda, a river in Siberia, in Buryatia, close to its border with the Chita Region. A left confluent of Vitim.

2. Konda, a river in Western Siberia, in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region. A left confluent of Irtysh, 1097 km (about 1755 miles) long. Nearby there is a village called Kondinskoye.

Moreover, in the Tomsk Region there is nowdays a village called Kandinka (former Kondinskaya Sloboda).

Map base by: Microsoft Encarta World Atlas 2000

Thus my ancestors and the ancestors of all the Kandinskys and Kondinskys lived near one of those rivers, which name they brought with them through centuries.

Obviously in the end of the XVII-th or in the beginning of the XVIII-th century some of the Kondinskys began writing their surname with an a instead of an o, i.e. in its actual form, Kandinsky. This was due to the fact that in most dialects of the present-day Russian the pronunciation of an unstressed vowel o is similar to the pronunciation of the letter u in the English word luck, and such a sound is usually spelled in Russian like an a. This is how the Kondinskys became Kandinskys.

Related topic: About Russian Names.