Even if you’re all thumbs, you’re in the right place: I’ve brought you a handful of Russian words about fingers, in all their shapes and sizes. In fact, Russian па́льцы go beyond your hands and reach all the way down to your feet, because this word means not only fingers, but also toes.
So let’s count them up.
1 большо́й па́лец - the thumb
2 указа́тельный па́лец - the index finger
3 сре́дний па́лец - the middle finger
4 безымя́нный па́лец - the ring finger (literally, it means “a finger without a name”)
5 мизи́нец / мизи́нчик - the little finger
By the way, when we count using our fingers, we bend them instead of straightening them, like people do in the US.
For the toes, the words большо́й, сре́дний and мизи́нец are also used, but the other two are referred to by numbers - второ́й and четвёртый (the count starts from the big toe).
An interesting fact you may not have heard of - AA batteries in Russian informally are called па́льчиковые батаре́йки (“finger batteries”), and AAA ones - мизи́нчиковые батаре́йки (“pinky finger batteries”).
Just like in English, we also have idioms including the word “finger”:
попа́сть па́льцем в не́бо (“to stick a finger into the sky”) - to guess blindly;
бъясни́ть на па́льцах (“to explain on fingers”) - to explain in a very simple, demonstrative way;
обвести́ вокру́г па́льца (“to lead someone around a finger”) - trick / manipulate;
па́лец о па́лец не уда́рить (“not to strike a finger against a finger”) - not to lift a finger, to make no effort;
па́льчики обли́жешь (“you’ll lick your little fingers”) - so tasty you’ll lick them.
And, of course, also знать как свои́ пять па́льцев — to know something like the back of your hand — which I hope you now do when it comes to fingers and toes in Russian.