Anglisizing Лев Николаевич Толстой

I look at a lot of charts. For my work, charts are the best way to easily convey and streamline complex data. I watch the FiveThirtyEight polling averages like a hawk. Great data visualization a powerful thing. But for all the charts that I look at plumbing the depths of science and politics, this is my favorite chart:

It shows the complex history of one of world literature's most prominent (if not most prominent) novelists and how language and languages changes over time. 

This is a plot of the usage of various English spellings of the name Лев Николаевич Толстой pulled from Google Books between 1852, when he published his first major work in Russian, and 2000. In English, as we can see from the top blue line, Л.Н. Толстой is better known as Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina (among other works).

This chart is fascinating to me for several reasons. First, Leo is not a phonetic translation of Лев. How Лев would be currently translated from Russian is Lev. Older tradition translates Лев as Lyof (pronounced ˈliːəʊf which sounds like Lay-eff) as seen on the cover of a translation of the Cossacks from 1899 (the title page says ‘the complete works’ which isn’t even true for works translated into English in 1899)

Leo is instead the Anglo-Latin word for lion, just as Лев is the Russian word for lion. This is fascinating because of its uniqueness among contemporary and modern Russian writers. We don’t say Theodore Dostovesky in English we say Fyodor for Фёдор. We don't say Michael Shishkin we say Mikhail (Михаил). Yet, Tolstoy’s given name is anglicized.

In the 1890s there are three competing spellings: Lyof Tolstoi, Leo Tolstoi, and Leo Tolstoi, with Leo Tolstoi being the most popular. The globalization of his given name seems to be an intentional choice by Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s work was translated to French before it was translated to English, and early French versions translate Лев as Leon just as most English translations use Leo. The divide between Tolstoi and Tolstoy is also fascinating. The Russian character ‘й’ doesn't have a great English equivalent and is often written as a ‘y’ or a ‘j’ (In the app Babel it is perplexingly ‘jj’). In French, ‘j’ is pronounced much differently and ‘й’ is translated as ‘i’ giving Tolstoi in French and early English translations that used the French (as seen above).

What really settled the spelling on Leo Tolstoy was the work of Constance Garnett, who translated an unbelievable 71 different Russian works. For decades, Garnett was the definitive English translation of works such as War and Peace and Crime and Punishment and largely still is (though Pevear and Volokhonsky would likely contest this). Audible’s unabridged War and Peace is the Constance Garnett translation. She translated the Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy in 1894, met Tolstoy, and published Anna Karenina in 1901 and War and Peace 1904 both by the Anglicized Count Leo Tolstoy, presumably with Tolstoy’s blessing.  The influence of the Garnett translations is clear in the chart below. Between 1894 and 1904 the usage of ‘Leo Tolstoy’ in English books increases by 559%, ‘Leo Tolstoi’ rose by only 125%, and ‘Lyof Tolstoi’ dropped by 230%. By 1960, Leo Tolstoy completely dominates Leo Tolstoi, and Lyof Tolstoi is all but extinct.

But shockingly, between 1965 and 1990, a new spelling emerged as a contender. From 1909-1911 there are literally zero uses of Lev Tolstoy in English books. In 1977 there is one use of Lev Tolstoy for every 2.5 uses of Leo Tolstoy. Where does this spelling come from and why did it peak when it did?

Lev Tolstoy is essentially another form of Lyof, both being phonetic translations of Лев compared to Leo or Leon which translate the meaning of Лев. As Lyof fades away at the turn of the 19th century, Lev slowly begins to gain prominence.

I am not sure why Lev Tolstoy rises to such heights, only to just as quickly fall back into obscurity, but I have some theories. My first theory is about changes in views on translation and the rise of post-colonial theory. I had hoped that in the 70s there was a grassroots movement of academics to reclaim Lev Tolstoy in trying to be more true to Russian culture than the brutally English Leo (#BringBackLev). This, unfortunately, seems to not be the case, or Google Scholar has failed me. Also, changing Lev (or Lyof #BringBackLyof) to Leo is probably more indicative of Russian aristocratic culture at the time as it tried to balance its identity between Russian and European.

My second theory is that the rise in Lev Tolstoy comes from the increasing dominance of English as the academic language after World War II. The dominant cultural and academic language shifts with time; Greek, Latin, Arabic, French, German, and English all having their time in the sun. After World War II, more non-native English speakers began writing in English bringing with them their own use of Lev Tolstoy. The drop off is due to everyone just as quickly realizing that no English speaker actually says Lev Tolstoy, and excising it from their English. 

In summary, this chart shows Tolstoy’s rise to prominence in the English speaking world amid a world in flux. You can almost feel the excitement of the 1880s, discovering Tolstoy’s work in Russian and rushing to translate them to English in the most expedient way possible, whether that be using French translations which give us Leo Tolstoi, or translating directly from Russian which give us Lyof Tolstoy, or pulling from both which gives us the amazing Lyof Tolstoi.

You can see the incredible influence of Constance Garnett on Russian literature in English in her standardization of Leo Tolstoy as the dominant spelling of Лев Николаевич Толстой. And we can see the surge and fall of Lev Tolstoy indicative of a changing global landscape, whether it is due to how non-Western countries are viewed (whether or not Russia is Western is a long and complicated question), or the shift away from French as the common language to English. No longer would we find ourselves in a world that produces Lyof Tolstoi but we may be in a world that produces amazing new spelling from translating through English as the mediating language.

All told, I think it is fitting that we call Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy. As much as I would love to see the world refer to Tolstoy as Lev Nikolayevich, we also don’t say Aleksander Pavlovitch, or Pyotr Alexeyevich, or Yekaterina Velikaya. We say Alexander I, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great. And we say Leo Tolstoy.