Hehe, a small piece of gossip about New Russian President Dmitry Medvedev:
Moscow (PTI): Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev apparently shares an India link unknown to many. The 42-year-old successor of Vladimir Putin has a surname which can trace its origin to Sanskrit [wiki].
Medvedev is derived from 'medved' the Russian word for bear. For pre-Christian Russians, who were the worshippers of wooden idols of 'Balvan' (almighty god), the use of the word 'ber' was a taboo and so they preferred to call the animal "Medved'.
While in Russian, 'Medved' would have translated to 'someone having the knowledge of honey', in Sanskrit, the word 'Madhu Vedi' has the same meaning.
AP report tells us How to say Medvedev and why he likes eating honey:
...Dmitry Medvedev, is pronounced just the way it looks — med-VEHD'-ev.
It stems from medved, the word for bear, a totem animal of Eastern Slavic tribes later known as Russians. The name recalls the Western stereotype of Russia as a country of brutal and drunken bear-men — not quite the figure cut by the bookish, delicate-looking lawyer.
"I eat honey sometimes, I just have to — because of my last name," Medvedev said Tuesday during a visit to the city of Ufa, where he was offered tea with honey.