Dog Names Meaning Joy

In July of 1918, nearly a hundred years ago, the last royal family of Russia was in exile, held prisoner in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The entire family was there, the former Tsar and Tsarina, now referred to simply as Nicholas and Alexandra, their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and their sickly thirteen-year-old son, Alexei. They had been accompanied into exile by the three family dogs Ortino, Jemmy, and Joy, and four servants, and they had been held there several weeks awaiting their fates. During the early morning hours of July 17^th, the prisoners were informed that  the White Army was approaching and they were ushered into the basement of the house, presumably for their own safety. It was in this dark cellar that the Bolsheviks brutally executed the family and their servants, shooting or stabbing each of them in turn, even turning their weapons on the family pets. Only one of the Romanovs made it out of that room alive, the constant and faithful companion to the young Crown Prince Alexei, the gentle brown and white Spaniel by the name of Joy. 

Several days after the execution of the Romanov family and their servants, the half-starved dog was spotted in the garden of the house where they had been imprisoned and was transported to the home of one of the guards of the Ipatiev House, Mikhail Leteman. Shortly thereafter, the dog was transferred into the care of Colonel Pavel (Paul) Rodzianko of the British Expeditionary Force, who discovered that Joy was completely unable to see. Colonel Rodzianko took Joy with him to where he was stationed at Omsk in Siberia. A former lady-in-waiting to the royal family by the name of Sophie Buxhoeveden came to Siberia and visited Joy. Even though the little Spaniel couldn’t see, he ran to her in ecstasy and stood on his hind legs when she called to him, recognizing the familiar voice and perhaps hoping she had brought his family as well, and when she left he became despondent and for a time refused to eat. When the White forces in Russia collapsed and the British troops were ordered to come back home, Colonel Rodzianko brought Joy with him back to England, where the little dog lived his remaining days in relative peace, later to be buried in a garden at Windsor marked by a simple headstone inscribed with the words “Here lies Joy.”