The owner of the surname Badanin can rightfully be proud of his surname as a wonderful example of Slavic culture, language and history.
Since ancient times, the Slavs had a tradition of giving a person a nickname in addition to the name he received at baptism. The fact is that there were relatively few church names, and they were often repeated. A truly inexhaustible supply of nicknames made it easy to single out a person in society. As sources could be used: an indication of the profession, the characteristics of a person's character or appearance, the name of the nationality or locality from which the person came.
Probably, the surname Badanin was formed from a nickname that indicated the peculiarities of the area where the founder of the family name lived. It is possible that this nickname is connected with the Kostroma word badan - "lake on hayfields".
Already in the XV–XVI centuries, among rich people, surnames denoting a person's belonging to a particular family began to be fixed and passed down from generation to generation. These were possessive adjectives with suffixes -ov /-ev, -in, initially indicating the nickname of the father. Surnames formed with the help of the family suffix -in were often formed from toponyms.
The possibility of forming the surname Badanin from the name of the village of Badai, located in the Irkutsk region on the Belaya River, is not excluded. Archaeological excavations are often carried out on the territory of the village and around it, because one of the oldest Stone Age sites in Siberia was once located in the valley of the Belaya River. Man lived there 50-60 thousand years ago. Archaeologists still find various flints, animal and fish bones, flint and stone products, horns and bones, mother-of-pearl jewelry in these places. It is possible that the ancestor of the Badanins came from this village.
Perhaps the surname Badanin came from the nickname Badai, which in the Central Russian dialects was called a playful, mischievous, joking person. Loving parents could also call a naughty baby that way: "Oh, you're a bad guy, how long will you stop being naughty!".
These words could form a nickname that changed either at the stage of the nickname, or at the stage of the surname (Badai – Badan – Badanin).
After the abolition of serfdom, the government faced a serious task - to give surnames to former serfs. In 1888, the Senate published a special decree in which it was written: "To be called by a certain surname is not only the right, but also the duty of every full-fledged person, and the designation of the surname on some documents is required by the law itself."
It is not possible to talk about the exact place and time of the appearance of the surname Badanin at the moment, since the process of forming surnames was quite long. Nevertheless, the surname Badanin is a remarkable monument of Slavic writing and culture.