Two parents in Sochi have embraced the Olympic spirit by naming their newborn girl Olympiada in honor of the Winter Games that are set to begin in the city on Feb. 7.
On Wednesday "parents registered a baby, whom they named Olympiada," said Tatyana Burova, head of a civil registry office in Sochi.
"It is the first time parents have given such a name to a baby girl in Russia," Burova said, Interfax reported Thursday.
The girl was born on New Year's Eve, Burova added.
She refused to disclose the girl's surname for confidentiality reasons.
Giving strange names to kids may be uncommon now in Russia, but in the Soviet era, especially in its early stages, giving babies unusual names was not out of the ordinary.
As well as many names containing references to the theorists of communism and its early leaders — Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin — parents sometimes gave their children names associated with industrialization or science, such as Elektrifikatsia ("electrification"), Radium, and Traktor for boys or Traktorina for girls.
The 1917 Revolution and revolutionary concepts also inspired the names Revolyutsiya, Oktyabrina, Barrikada ("barricade"), and Giotin ("guillotine").
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