GE>I have noticed on my surname that "Vomacka" becomes "Vomackova" when the GE>gender shifts from male to female. What sort of language rules apply on GE>dropping a letter (vowel only?) as with the "ek" on bs039's examples or just GE>changing the "a" to "ova" x for arbitrary consonant, o for arbitrary vowel, particular letters in uppercase Adjective-like names: change -Y to -A only: Tichy->Ticha Minsky->Minska Substantives: -EK drop vowel, then append; Vondracek->Vondrackova -A drop A, then append; Pivonka->Pivonkova Benda->Bendova -oEL (foreign) append: Daniel->Danielova Samuel->Samuelova -xEL drop E, then append: Pavel->Pavlova (but no drop with verb-like names, formally past participles: Kacel->Kacelova) -IOS, -IUS (Greek origin) drop -ox and append: Alexius->Alexiova otherwise: append -ova Singular irregularities will sure exist. I'll pass Czech surname list through this algorithm and we shall see. But not today. Jaroslav Pivonka <pivonka@ibm.net> aka <jpivonka@bbs.infima.cz>