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What does “меня зовут” mean in Russian?

Меня зовут is Russian for “my name is,” but its grammar is stranger than it looks. Зовут is the third-person plural of звать (“to call”) — so the phrase literally means “they call me,” with an unspecified “they” that nobody says aloud. It is one of Russian’s most common structures: an impersonal verb with the focus on the person being named, not on who is doing the naming.

The teacher in this clip demonstrates the phrase by role-playing as Monica Bellucci, Prince Harry, Julia Roberts, and Jackie Chan — each character introduces themselves with меня зовут X before apologising that they don’t speak Russian. The repetition across four famous faces fixes the phrase fast. To ask someone’s name in return, use как вас зовут? (“what is your name?” — literally “how do they call you?”), which uses the same hidden-plural structure. The accusative меня (not я) is because звать takes a direct object: it is you who is being called, not you who is calling.