Name of Georgia
Encyclopedia
Georgia is an exonym for the nation
in the Caucasus
whose self-designation (autonym) is Sakartvelo . The exonym has been variously explained as being derived from the Greek
γεωργός ("tiller of the land"), the name of St. George, and from ancient Persian
designations of the Georgians
. The native name is derived from the core central Georgian region of Kartli
– Iberia
of the Classical
and Byzantine
sources – around which the early medieval cultural and political unity of the Georgians was formed.
– Iberia
of the Classical
and Byzantine
sources. By the early 9th century, the meaning of "Kartli" was expanded to other areas of medieval Georgia held together by religion, culture, and language. The Georgian circumfix
sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating "the area where X dwell", where X is an ethnonym
.
The earliest reference to "Sakartvelo" occurs in the c.
800 Georgian chronicle by Pseudo-Juansher. Within the next 200 years, this designation was reconfigured so that it came to signify the all-Georgian realm which came into existence with the political unification of Kartli/Iberia and Apkhazeti/Abasgia under Bagrat III
in 1008. However, it was not until the early 13th century that the term fully entered regular official usage.
The memory and dream of a united Georgia – Sakartvelo – persisted even after the political catastrophe of the 15th century when the Georgian kingdom fell apart to form three separate kingdoms: Kartli, Kakheti
, and Imereti
, and five principalities: Samtskhe, Mingrelia
, Guria
, Svaneti
, and Abkhazia
. Thus, the later kings of Kartli did not relinquish the titles of the all-Georgian monarchs whose legitimate successors they claimed to be. The idea of all-Georgian unity also dominated history-writing of the early 18th-century Georgian scholar and a member of the royal family
, Prince Vakhushti
, whose "Description of the Kingdom of Georgia" (agtsera sameposa sakartvelosa) had a noticeable influence on the latter-day conception of Sakartvelo. Although Georgia was politically divided among competing kingdoms and principalities during Vakhushti’s lifetime, the scholar viewed the past and present of these breakaway polities as parts of the history of a single nation.
After more than a century of the Imperial Russian
rule, on May 26, 1918, the country was reincarnated as საქართველოს დემოკრატიული რესპუბლიკა sakartvelos demokratiuli respublika – the Democratic Republic of Georgia
. It became საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა sakartvelos sabchota socialisturi respublika – the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic – on February 25, 1921, and საქართველოს რესპუბლიკა sakartvelos respublika – the Republic of Georgia – on November 14, 1990. According to the 1995 constitution, the nation's official name is Sakartvelo, with "Georgia" as its English
equivalent.
The European "Georgia" probably stems from the Persian-Arabic designation of the Georgians – gurğ, ğurğ – which reached the Western Europe
an crusaders and pilgrims in the Holy Land
who rendered the name as Georgia (also Jorgania, Giorginia, etc.) and explained its origin by the popularity of St. George among the Georgians. This explanation is offered, among others, by Jacques de Vitry
and Franz Ferdinand von Troilo. Another theory, popularized by the likes of Jean Chardin
, semantically linked "Georgia" to Greek and Latin roots, respectively, γεωργός ("tiller of the land") and georgicus ("agricultural"). The supporters of this explanation sometimes referred to classical authors, in particular Pliny
and Pomponius Mela
. The "Georgi" mentioned by these authors (Pliny, IV.26, VI.14; Mela, De Sita Orb. i.2, &50; ii.1, & 44, 102.) were merely agricultural tribes, so named to distinguish them from their unsettled and pastoral neighbors on the other side of the river Panticapea
(in Taurica
).
In the 19th century, scholars first put the popular European etymologies in question. Marie-Félicité Brosset
favored the derivation of the name Georgia from that of the river Mtkvari via Kuros-Cyrus-Kura-Djurzan.
According to several modern scholars, "Georgia" seems to have been borrowed in the 11th or 12th centuries from the Syriac
gurz-ān/gurz-iyān and Arabic
ĵurĵan/ĵurzan, derived from the New Persian gurğ/gurğān, itself stemming from the Ancient Iranian and Middle Persian
vrkān/waručān of unclear origin, but resembling the eastern trans-Caspian
toponym Gorgan
, which comes from the Middle Persian varkâna, "land of the wolves". This might have been of the same etymology as the Armenian Virk (Վիրք) and a source of the Greco-Roman rendition Iberi , the ethnonym already known to them as a designation of the Iberian peoples
of the Iberian Peninsula
.
The Russian
exonym Gruziya (Грузия ['gruzʲɪjə]) is also of Perso-Arabic origin. It first occurs in the travel records of Ignatiy Smolnyanin as gurzi (гурзи) (1389) and Afanasy Nikitin
as gurzynskaya zemlya (Гурзыньская земля, "Gurzin land") (1466-72).
The Russian name was brought into several other languages, such as Bulgarian, Belarusian, Chinese, Croatian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Kyrgyz, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Macedonian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Yiddish and others. It also entered the contemporary Hebrew as גרוזיה ("Gruz-ia"). It coexisted with the names גאורגיה ("Gheorghia" with two hard gs) and גורג'יה (Gurjia), when "Gruzia" took over in the 1970s, probably due to a massive immigration
of bilingual Georgian-Russian Jews to Israel
at that time. In August 2005 the Georgian ambassador to Israel Lasha Zhvania
asked that the Hebrew speakers refer to his country as "Georgia" גאורגיה and abandon the name "Gruzia". Similar request was issued by Georgia, in December 2009, to Lithuania
, asking to be called "Georgija" instead of "Gruzija"; the request was forwarded to the Commission of the Lithuanian Language
.
In June 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia said South Korea
had agreed to refer to the country as “Georgia” instead of the Russian-influenced “Gruzya” and the government of Georgia was continuing talks with other countries on the issue.
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
in the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
whose self-designation (autonym) is Sakartvelo . The exonym has been variously explained as being derived from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
γεωργός ("tiller of the land"), the name of St. George, and from ancient Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
designations of the Georgians
Georgians
The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....
. The native name is derived from the core central Georgian region of Kartli
Kartli
Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari , on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial role in ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages...
– Iberia
Caucasian Iberia
Iberia , also known as Iveria , was a name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli , corresponding roughly to the eastern and southern parts of the present day Georgia...
of the Classical
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
and Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
sources – around which the early medieval cultural and political unity of the Georgians was formed.
Autonym
The native Georgian name for the country is Sakartvelo (საქართველო). The word consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i (sing., ქართველ-ი), originally referred to an inhabitant of the core central Georgian region of KartliKartli
Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari , on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial role in ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages...
– Iberia
Caucasian Iberia
Iberia , also known as Iveria , was a name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli , corresponding roughly to the eastern and southern parts of the present day Georgia...
of the Classical
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
and Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
sources. By the early 9th century, the meaning of "Kartli" was expanded to other areas of medieval Georgia held together by religion, culture, and language. The Georgian circumfix
Circumfix
A circumfix is an affix, a morpheme that is placed around another morpheme. Circumfixes contrast with prefixes, attached to the beginnings of words; suffixes, that are attached at the end; and infixes, inserted in the middle. See also epenthesis...
sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating "the area where X dwell", where X is an ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
.
The earliest reference to "Sakartvelo" occurs in the c.
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...
800 Georgian chronicle by Pseudo-Juansher. Within the next 200 years, this designation was reconfigured so that it came to signify the all-Georgian realm which came into existence with the political unification of Kartli/Iberia and Apkhazeti/Abasgia under Bagrat III
Bagrat III of Georgia
Bagrat III , of the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty, was King of the Abkhazians from 978 on and King of Georgia from 1008 on. He united these two titles by dynastic inheritance and, through conquest and diplomacy, added some more lands to his realm, effectively becoming the first king of what is...
in 1008. However, it was not until the early 13th century that the term fully entered regular official usage.
The memory and dream of a united Georgia – Sakartvelo – persisted even after the political catastrophe of the 15th century when the Georgian kingdom fell apart to form three separate kingdoms: Kartli, Kakheti
Kingdom of Kakheti
The Kingdom of Kakheti was a late medieval/early modern monarchy in eastern Georgia, centered at the province of Kakheti, with its capital first at Gremi and then at Telavi...
, and Imereti
Kingdom of Imereti
The Kingdom of Imereti was established in 1455 by a member of the house of Bagration when the Kingdom of Georgia was dissolved into rival kingdoms. Before that time, Imereti was considered a separate kingdom within the Kingdom of Georgia, to which a cadet branch of the Bagration royal family held...
, and five principalities: Samtskhe, Mingrelia
Principality of Mingrelia
The Principality of Mingrelia was a historical state in Georgia ruled by the Dadiani dynasty. Established as an independent Principality in 1557 by Levan I Dadiani as a hereditary mtavari , it remained independent until it became subject to Imperial Russia in 1803...
, Guria
Principality of Guria
The Principality of Guria was a historical state in Georgia. Centered on modern-day Guria, a southwestern region in Georgia, it was located between the Black Sea and Lesser Caucasus, and was ruled by a succession of twenty-two princes of the House of Gurieli from the 1460s to 1829. The...
, Svaneti
Principality of Svaneti
The Principality of Svaneti was a small principality in the Greater Caucasus mountains that emerged following the breakup of the Kingdom of Georgia in the late 15th century...
, and Abkhazia
Principality of Abkhazia
The Principality of Abkhazia emerged as a separate feudal entity in the 15th-16th centuries, amid the civil wars in the Kingdom of Georgia that concluded with the dissolution of the unified Georgian monarchy...
. Thus, the later kings of Kartli did not relinquish the titles of the all-Georgian monarchs whose legitimate successors they claimed to be. The idea of all-Georgian unity also dominated history-writing of the early 18th-century Georgian scholar and a member of the royal family
Bagrationi Dynasty
The Bagrationi dynasty was the ruling family of Georgia. Their ascendency lasted from the early Middle Ages until the early 19th century. In modern usage, this royal line is frequently referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, a Hellenized form of their dynastic name.The origin of the Bagrationi...
, Prince Vakhushti
Vakhushti
Vakhushti was a Georgian prince , geographer, historian and cartographer.- Life :A son of King Vakhtang VI of Kartli , he was born in Tbilisi, 1696...
, whose "Description of the Kingdom of Georgia" (agtsera sameposa sakartvelosa) had a noticeable influence on the latter-day conception of Sakartvelo. Although Georgia was politically divided among competing kingdoms and principalities during Vakhushti’s lifetime, the scholar viewed the past and present of these breakaway polities as parts of the history of a single nation.
After more than a century of the Imperial Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
rule, on May 26, 1918, the country was reincarnated as საქართველოს დემოკრატიული რესპუბლიკა sakartvelos demokratiuli respublika – the Democratic Republic of Georgia
Democratic Republic of Georgia
The Democratic Republic of Georgia , 1918–1921, was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia.The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. It became საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა sakartvelos sabchota socialisturi respublika – the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic – on February 25, 1921, and საქართველოს რესპუბლიკა sakartvelos respublika – the Republic of Georgia – on November 14, 1990. According to the 1995 constitution, the nation's official name is Sakartvelo, with "Georgia" as its English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
equivalent.
Exonym
| Language | Georgia |
|---|---|
| Georgian Georgian language Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad... |
საქართველო sakart'velo |
| Abkhaz Abkhaz language Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan... |
Қырҭтәыла ķyrţtwyla |
| Armenian Armenian language The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora... |
Վրաստան Vrastan, Վիրք Virk' |
| Arabic Arabic language Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book... |
جورجيا juurjiya |
| Azerbaijani Azerbaijani language Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran... |
Gürcüstan Gyurjustan |
| Belarusian Belarusian language The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people... |
Грузія Hrúziya |
| Bulgarian Bulgarian language Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the... |
Грузия Grúziya |
| Chinese (traditional) Chinese language The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages... |
格魯吉亞 Gélǔjíyà |
| Chinese (simplified) Chinese language The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages... |
格鲁吉亚 Gélǔjíyà |
| Estonian Estonian language Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities... |
Gruusia |
| Persian Persian language Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence... |
گرجستان Gorjestân |
| Greek Greek language Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;... |
Γεωργία Georgia |
| Hebrew Hebrew language Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such... |
גרוזיה Grúzia |
| Japanese Japanese language is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an... |
グルジア Gurujia |
| Korean Korean language Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing... |
그루지야 Geurujiya |
| Latvian Latvian language Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language... |
Gruzija |
| Lithuanian Lithuanian language Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they... |
Gruzija |
| Ossetian | Гуырдзыстон Gwyrdzyston |
| Russian Russian language Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics... |
Грузия Grúziya |
| Turkish Turkish language Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,... |
Gürcistan Gyurjistan |
| Ukrainian Ukrainian language Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet.... |
Грузія Hrúziya |
| Yiddish Yiddish language Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages... |
גרוזיע Gruzye |
The European "Georgia" probably stems from the Persian-Arabic designation of the Georgians – gurğ, ğurğ – which reached the Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
an crusaders and pilgrims in the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
who rendered the name as Georgia (also Jorgania, Giorginia, etc.) and explained its origin by the popularity of St. George among the Georgians. This explanation is offered, among others, by Jacques de Vitry
Jacques de Vitry
Jacques de Vitry was a theologian chronicler and cardinal from 1229 – 40.He was born in central France and studied at the University of Paris, becoming a regular canon in 1210 at the church of Saint-Nicolas d'Oignies in the Diocese of Liège, a post he maintained until 1216...
and Franz Ferdinand von Troilo. Another theory, popularized by the likes of Jean Chardin
Jean Chardin
Jean Chardin , born Jean-Baptiste Chardin, and also known as Sir John Chardin, was a French jeweller and traveller whose ten-volume book The Travels of Sir John Chardin is regarded as one of the finest works of early Western scholarship on Persia and the Near East.-Life and work:Chardin was born in...
, semantically linked "Georgia" to Greek and Latin roots, respectively, γεωργός ("tiller of the land") and georgicus ("agricultural"). The supporters of this explanation sometimes referred to classical authors, in particular Pliny
Pliny the Younger
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo , better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him...
and Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45.His short work occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing...
. The "Georgi" mentioned by these authors (Pliny, IV.26, VI.14; Mela, De Sita Orb. i.2, &50; ii.1, & 44, 102.) were merely agricultural tribes, so named to distinguish them from their unsettled and pastoral neighbors on the other side of the river Panticapea
Panticapaeum
Panticapaeum , present-day Kerch: an important city and port in Taurica , situated on a hill Panticapaeum (Greek: Παντικάπαιον, Pantikápaion), present-day Kerch: an important city and port in Taurica (Tauric Chersonese), situated on a hill Panticapaeum (Greek: Παντικάπαιον, Pantikápaion),...
(in Taurica
Taurica
Taurica, Tauric Chersonese, and Taurida were names by which the territory of Crimea was known to the Greeks and Romans.- Etymology of the name :...
).
In the 19th century, scholars first put the popular European etymologies in question. Marie-Félicité Brosset
Marie-Félicité Brosset
Marie-Félicité Brosset was a French orientalist who specialized in Georgian and Armenian studies.He was born in Paris into the family of a poor merchant who died the same year that Brosset was born...
favored the derivation of the name Georgia from that of the river Mtkvari via Kuros-Cyrus-Kura-Djurzan.
According to several modern scholars, "Georgia" seems to have been borrowed in the 11th or 12th centuries from the Syriac
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
gurz-ān/gurz-iyān and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
ĵurĵan/ĵurzan, derived from the New Persian gurğ/gurğān, itself stemming from the Ancient Iranian and Middle Persian
Middle Persian
Middle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...
vrkān/waručān of unclear origin, but resembling the eastern trans-Caspian
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
toponym Gorgan
Gorgan
Gorgan Some east of Gorgan is the Golestan National Park. The city has a regional airport and several universities. Gorgan Airport was opened in September 2005.-Etymology:...
, which comes from the Middle Persian varkâna, "land of the wolves". This might have been of the same etymology as the Armenian Virk (Վիրք) and a source of the Greco-Roman rendition Iberi , the ethnonym already known to them as a designation of the Iberian peoples
Iberians
The Iberians were a set of peoples that Greek and Roman sources identified with that name in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian peninsula at least from the 6th century BC...
of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
.
The Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
exonym Gruziya (Грузия ['gruzʲɪjə]) is also of Perso-Arabic origin. It first occurs in the travel records of Ignatiy Smolnyanin as gurzi (гурзи) (1389) and Afanasy Nikitin
Afanasy Nikitin
Afanasy Nikitin was a Russian merchant and one of the first Europeans to travel to and document his visit to India. He described his trip in a narrative known as The Journey Beyond Three Seas .-The voyage:In 1466, Nikitin left his hometown of Tver on a commercial trip to India...
as gurzynskaya zemlya (Гурзыньская земля, "Gurzin land") (1466-72).
The Russian name was brought into several other languages, such as Bulgarian, Belarusian, Chinese, Croatian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Kyrgyz, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Macedonian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Yiddish and others. It also entered the contemporary Hebrew as גרוזיה ("Gruz-ia"). It coexisted with the names גאורגיה ("Gheorghia" with two hard gs) and גורג'יה (Gurjia), when "Gruzia" took over in the 1970s, probably due to a massive immigration
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
of bilingual Georgian-Russian Jews to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
at that time. In August 2005 the Georgian ambassador to Israel Lasha Zhvania
Lasha Zhvania
Lasha Zhvania is a Georgian politician, the Minister for Economic Development from November 2008 till August 2009 and an ex-Parliament of Georgia...
asked that the Hebrew speakers refer to his country as "Georgia" גאורגיה and abandon the name "Gruzia". Similar request was issued by Georgia, in December 2009, to Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, asking to be called "Georgija" instead of "Gruzija"; the request was forwarded to the Commission of the Lithuanian Language
Commission of the Lithuanian Language
The State Commission of the Lithuanian Language is the official language regulating body of the Lithuanian language.The Language Commission was put in operation in 1961 as a non-governmental entity under the auspices of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences....
.
In June 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia said South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
had agreed to refer to the country as “Georgia” instead of the Russian-influenced “Gruzya” and the government of Georgia was continuing talks with other countries on the issue.