I’ve been scanning in family photos and I came across this one. My father, rather unhelpfully, wrote-
Russian photo from my maternal grandfather: [NAME] Among the notables: back row, third figure on right is Maxim Gorky[!]; front row, second figure on left (with watch-chain) is Feodor Chaliapin.
Chaliapin was apparently a notable opera singer.
What are the other names so I can know which one is my great-grandfather? If it’s okay, once the names are transliterated, I’m not going to say which one I’m related to. I realize it was a long time ago, but you never know.
But how cool is it that he knew Maxim Gorky?
You can use ChatGPT for that! Here’s what it spit out when I asked it to romanize the names and write them inline.
Пятницкiй (Pyatnitsky), Скиталецъ (Skitalets), М. Горький (M. Gorky), Найденовъ (Naydenov), Л. Андреев (L. Andreev), Шаляпинъ (Shalyapin), Бунинъ (Bunin), Телешевъ (Teleshev), Чирико (Chiriko)
E: Apparently, it can also read the names on the picture! Just copy and paste it into the chat.