Mongolian Names, and How to Address Someone

There is no family name to look for

An English speaker meeting a Mongolian name reaches for the wrong slot immediately. We are trained to split a name into a given name and an inherited family name, and to treat the second as the fixed, formal, alphabetical one. Mongolian does not work like that. A person has one real name, their own, and in front of it stands the father's given name — in the genitive.

A woman called Дэлгэрмаа whose father is called Бат writes her name as Батын Дэлгэрмаа, which is, word for word, Bat's Delgermaa. The ending is nothing special: Бат ends in a consonant after a back vowel, so it takes –ын exactly as ном gives номын. Choosing the right genitive ending for a given name is the ordinary problem of the case, and it is solved on the Mongolian genitive.

Three consequences follow, and all three matter in practice. The genitive element is not what you call someone — Батын Дэлгэрмаа is addressed as Дэлгэрмаа, never as Бат. It is not shared across a family in the European way: brothers and sisters share it, cousins do not, and it changes in the next generation. And because it is not a stable family label, lists of people in Mongolia are ordered by the person's own name, not by the element in front of it. A form that asks for a surname and a first name is asking a question Mongolian does not answer, and you will see Mongolians fill such forms in two different ways on two different days.

The method's way of asking for the whole thing is Чиний овог нэр хэн бэ?, and its own answer settles what the question means: Миний овог нэр Батын Дэлгэрмаа. The phrase овог нэр covers both words together — the patronymic and the given name — and that is the only sense in which a Mongolian has what English calls a full name.

A name is made of words you already know

Mongolian names are not opaque the way Geoffrey or Barbara are opaque to an English speaker. They are ordinary vocabulary, chosen for what it means, and once you can read the alphabet you can read a name:

Most names are two of these elements joined: Алтанцэцэг is golden flower, Сарангэрэл is moonlight, Батгэрэл is steady light, Оюунбилэг is a gift of mind. Some elements are preferred for girls and some for boys — цэцэг and гэрэл for girls, бат, баатар and билэг for boys — but nothing elsewhere in the sentence changes to match the choice.

There is one piece of real grammar hiding in those compounds, and it is the reason a name can look as if it breaks a rule you have just learned. Each element keeps its own vowels. Батгэрэл has back vowels in its first half and front vowels in its second; Алтанцэцэг does the same; Сүхбаатар does it the other way round. These words do not disobey vowel harmony — harmony applies inside a unit, and a compound name is two units. The same thing happens in place names: Өвөрхангай, Тосонцэнгэл. The principle is set out on the suffixes that do not follow vowel harmony.

Names that mean "not him"

One small group of names looks like a mistake until you know the reason for it. Тэрбиш means, literally, not that one. It was given to a child to make the child uninteresting to whatever might be looking for it — a name as camouflage. The course explains it as protecting the child from the evil eye.

The grammar in it is worth a sentence, because you already have the pieces. биш is the word that negates a noun, so тэр биш is not that one and the name simply writes it as one word. The full system of Mongolian negatives, including where биш sits among them, is on saying no in Mongolian.

A name is a noun, and it declines like one

This is the part that English gives you no practice in. English names take an apostrophe and otherwise sit still. Mongolian names go through the seven cases like any other noun, so the same person appears in half a dozen shapes across a conversation:

Two of those rows show a spelling adjustment rather than a new ending. Дэлгэрмаа ends in a long vowel, so the instrumental inserts a linking г and gives Дэлгэрмаагаар; Москва does the same in the genitive and gives Москвагийн их сургуульд (at the university of Moscow). The linking letters are not a rule about names — they apply to any stem of that shape, and they are explained on how a Mongolian word is built. Which ending each case uses in the first place is the business of the seven cases.

Place names and the word that carries the ending

Mongolian very often names a place as two words: the name itself, and a generic word saying what kind of place it is — хот (city), аймаг (province). When the pair is inflected, the ending falls on the generic word and the name stands bare:

• Мөрөн хотод (in the city of Mörön);
• Москва хотоос (from the city of Moscow);
• Хөвсгөл аймаг руу (towards Khövsgöl province).

This is the general rule that only the last word of a group takes the ending, applied to names; it is the same mechanism that gives онгоцны буудлаас from онгоцны буудал. The third example uses the direction word, which has a page of its own, because the choice between it and two of the cases is a three-way split that English flattens into to.

Saying what someone is called

The Mongolian sentence for introducing a name does not use a verb to be. It uses the verb of naming, and it puts the word нэр (name) in the accusative:

Миний нэрийг Сарангэрэл гэдэг.

my name-ACC Sarangerel call-HAB

"My name is Sarangerel."

Read literally it says they call my name Sarangerel, which is a construction with no English counterpart and one you should learn whole. The verb in it belongs to a family of structures for reporting and naming, treated on complex sentences.

The question that goes with it contains the trap that catches every beginner: Mongolian asks who is your name, not what is your name. The question word and the reason for it are on Mongolian question words.

гуай, and why it cannot be translated as "Mr"

гуай is the respectful word that goes with a name, and almost everything about it is the opposite of the English equivalent.

• It comes after the name, not before: Баатар гуай. The method's sentence is Та Баатар гуай биз? (you are Baatar, I take it?).
• It goes with the person's own name, which is the given name — not with the patronymic. Батын Дэлгэрмаа is addressed as Дэлгэрмаа гуай. An English speaker who reasons from Mr Smith will reach for the first element and get it exactly wrong.
• It is a separate word, and the whole phrase declines as a unit, with the ending on гуай: the method's sentence is Би Оюунбаатар гуайтай ярих гэсэн юм (I would like to speak with Mr Oyunbaatar), where the comitative sits on гуай and not on Оюунбаатар. The name itself stays bare, exactly as in Мөрөн хотод.

That last point is the one to practise, because it is where the grammar of this page meets the grammar of the cases. If you want to say you gave something to someone with respect, the dative-locative goes on гуай and not on the name.

When to use гуай at all, whom it fits, and the related and much harder choice between та and чи for you, are questions of register rather than of form, and they are on та or чи: politeness and set phrases. The pronoun forms themselves are on personal pronouns and possessives.

What to do with all this on a first meeting

Collect the person's own name and use it. If the name has two words, the second is the one you say. Add гуай behind it when the person is older than you or senior to you, and keep the pair together when the phrase takes an ending. Expect the name to change shape as the conversation moves, and expect the element in front of it to be the father's name rather than a family name you can look up. None of this requires memorising a list of forms; it requires one adjustment of habit, which is to stop looking for the slot English has taught you to look for.