In the Russian Empire, illegitimate children were sometimes given artificial surnames, rather than the surnames of their parents. In some cases an illegitimate child of a Russian aristocrat was given a surname derived from the surname of the father by truncation of the first syllable. For example, Trubetskoy -> Betskoy. There were some other ways to hint at the parent's surname, while in still other cases new surnames had no direct relation to that of parent's.[1][2][3]
Other truncated surnames include: Yelagin -> Agin, Repnin -> Pnin, Golitsyn -> Litsyn, deLitsyn , Vorontsov -> Rantsov, Rumyantsev -> Umyantsev,[1] Potemkin -> Temkina.