# Bulgarian: marigold



## seitt

Hi

Please, how do you say 'marigold'?

I'm interested because I gather that the name Неве́на is derived from it. Please give stress.

Best

Simon


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## lavverats

Hi Simon,
If you mean this flower, than it's called "нев*е*н"(nev*e*n):



And, yes, the name "Нев*е*на" (a female name in Bulgaria) is derived from it.
Regards,


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## seitt

Thank you so much - btw, what is the gender of нев*е*н?


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## lavverats

Masculine.


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## FairOaks

seitt said:


> Thank you so much - btw, what is the gender of нев*е*н?


Additional information:
_невѐн_ (less often: нѐвен) (masculine) — marigold.
_Невѐн_ (less often: Нѐвен) (masculine) — a male given name.
_Невѐна_ (feminine) — a female given name.
Etymology: цвете, което не вехне = a flower which does not wilt


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## seitt

Wow, how fascinating! So the verb is вехна, then. Interesting how it lost the Х.


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## FairOaks

Elision is pretty common in informal spoken Bulgarian, perhaps even more so than in English. (I hope I'm not misleading you about the latter, but at least that's how it seems to me.) Moreover, it's something of a feature in a lot of dialects, slang and so forth. For example, people often say things like «Айде!» and «Ма̀ни се оттука!» (instead of _хайде_, _махнѝ_).


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## Duya

/x/ is indeed a rather volatile phoneme in Serbia, Macedonia and western Bulgaria. However, in the case of вехне, one could argue that /x/ is a reintroduction encountered in Bulgarian (and Bosnian) -- the verb is Common Slavic which (if I remember well) didn't have that phoeme:

http://hjp.novi-liber.hr/index.php?show=search_by_id&id=f19uWxR9&keyword=venuti


> ✧ prasl. *vędnǫti (rus. vjánut', češ. vadnouti)



The flower is also _neven_ in BCS, by the way, and we also have male name Neven and female Nevena.


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## FairOaks

You could be onto something here, Duya. I didn't consider _вянуть_ at all. I must confess I haven't a clue about the origin of this inserted /x/. Now that you've got me thinking, it seems to me that _вехна_ could be some weird contamination between _вѧнѫти_ and _съхнѫти_, but this is, of course, pure guesswork on my part, so I'll stop while it's still safe. The main thing is, though, that _невехн_ sounds outright stupid and is also quite difficult to pronounce, therefore I can't imagine it as a proper Bulgarian word, regardless of the presence/absence of the phoneme /x/ in _вехна_.


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## Duya

FairOaks said:


> Now that you've got me thinking, it seems to me that _вехна_ could be some weird contamination between _вѧнѫти_ and _съхнѫти_



Those were my thoughts exactly


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