Boyan is the name of a bard

Bard

In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...

 who was mentioned in the Rus' epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

 The Lay of Igor's Campaign

The Tale of Igor's Campaign

The Tale of Igor's Campaign is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.The title is occasionally translated as The Song of Igor's Campaign, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and The Lay of...

as being active at the court of Yaroslav the Wise. He is apostrophized as Volos

Veles (god)

Veles also known as Volos is a major Slavic supernatural force of earth, waters and the underworld, associated with dragons, cattle, magic, musicians, wealth and trickery...

's grandson in the opening lines of The Lay (probably a reference to Veles as the patron of musicians). Historians have been unable to determine whether Boyan was his proper name (as Nikolai Karamzin and Fyodor Buslayev postulated) or all skald

Skald

The skald was a member of a group of poets, whose courtly poetry is associated with the courts of Scandinavian and Icelandic leaders during the Viking Age, who composed and performed renditions of aspects of what we now characterise as Old Norse poetry .The most prevalent metre of skaldic poetry is...

s of Rus were called boyans (Alexander Vostokov

Alexander Vostokov

Alexander Khristoforovich Vostokov was one of the first Russian philologists.He was born in Arensburg, Governorate of Livonia, and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts. As a natural son of Baron von Osten-Sacken, he received the name Osteneck, which he later chose to render into Russian as...

).

Although The Lay is the only authentic source mentioning Boyan, his name became exceedingly popular with later generations. He is mentioned in the Zadonshchina

Zadonshchina

Zadonshchina is a Russian literary monument of the late 14th century, which tells of the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380.- Redactions and the Prototext :Zadonshina exists in 2 redactions:...

and Pushkin's Ruslan and Ludmila. The folklorist Alexander Afanasyev

Alexander Afanasyev

Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev was a Russian folklorist who recorded and published over 600 Russian folktales and fairytales, by far the largest folktale collection by any one man in the world...

 considered Boyan a precursor of Ukrainian kobzar

Kobzar

A Kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment.-Tradition:Kobzars were often blind, and became predominantly so by the 1800s...

s. Soviet scholars

Soviet historiography

Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...

 tended to associate him with the House of Chernihiv

Chernihiv

Chernihiv or Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast , as well as of the surrounding Chernihivskyi Raion within the oblast...

, assuming that he started his career at the court of Mstislav of Tmutarakan. Boris Rybakov

Boris Rybakov

Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov was a Soviet and Russian historian who personified the anti-Normanist vision of Russian history....

 supported this theory and linked his name to a graffito on the wall of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is an outstanding architectural monument of Kievan Rus'. Today, it is one of the city's best known landmarks and the first Ukrainian patrimony to be inscribed on the World Heritage List along with the Kiev Cave Monastery complex...

 which mentions a purchase of "Boyan's land" by "Vsevolod

Vsevolod I of Kiev

Vsevolod I Yaroslavich , ruled as Grand Prince of Kiev from 1078 until his death.-Early life:...

's wife".
The Russian version of the button accordion

Button accordion

A button accordion is a type of accordion on which the melody-side keyboard consists of a series of buttons rather than piano-style keys. There exists a wide variation in keyboard systems, tuning, action and construction of these instruments...

 is known as the bayan

Bayan (accordion)

The bayan is a type of chromatic button accordion developed in Russia in the early 20th century and named after 11th-century bard Boyan.-Characteristics:The bayan differs from western chromatic button accordions in some details of construction:...

and was named after legendary Boyan upon its invention in 1907.