Vyacheslav

Vyacheslav is an old Slavic compound name, vyache and slav, meaning greater glory, a cousin of the many -slav names that thread through Eastern European history. It was borne by a tenth-century Bohemian duke and saint known in English as Wenceslas, the good king of the Christmas carol, and by the Soviet foreign minister Molotov, whose cocktails became a noun. The familiar short form is Slava, glory itself. Three syllables in the Russian with the stress on the last, consonant-rich at the start, a soft v hum in the middle. Vyacheslav reads strong and classical, a name of chronicles, crowns, and deep winter bells.