Diminutive and hypocoristic forms are male names native to the Ukrainian language that have either an empty inflexional suffix (Івась, Павлусь, Гриць) or the affixes -о, -ик (Славко, Грицько, Василько, Андрійчик, Петрик, Дмитрик).
[1] Female names have the affixes -ся, -йка, -нька, (Катруся, Гануся, Соломійка, Надійка, Марієнька, Христинонька).
As in most cultures, a person has a given name chosen by his or her parents.
Pre-Christian wishful names were given in the hope of controlling the fate of the people.
For instance, to scare away evil, children were given names derived from dangerous predatory animals.