Name of Ukraine
Encyclopedia
The name "Ukraine" ( Ukrayina ukraˈjina) has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century. Today, it has the official name of Ukraine
, a country in Eastern Europe
.
of the twelfth and thirteenth-century Primary Chronicle
, whose 1187 entry on the death of Prince Volodymyr of Pereyaslav says “The Ukraina groaned for him”, (o nem že Ukraina mnogo postona). The term is also mentioned for the years 1189, 1213, 1280, and 1282 for various East Slavic lands (for example, Galician Ukrayina, etc.), possibly referring to different principalities of Kievan Rus'
(cf. Skljarenko 1991, Pivtorak 1998) or to different borderlands (Vasmer 1953–1958, Rudnyc’kyj and Sychynskyj 1949).
In the sixteenth century, both Polish
and Ukrainian
sources used the word Ukraina with specific reference to the large south-eastern Kiev Voivodeship, including the voivodships of Bratslav
after 1569 and Chernihiv
after 1619.
Seventeenth-century Zaporozhian Cossacks used the term in a more poetic sense, to refer to their 'fatherland'. Western cartographers, including Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan and Johann Baptiste Homman, drew maps of "Ukraine" as the "land of the Cossacks". But the name seems to have been in common use when the Swedish army entered Ukraine
in October 1708. The Swedish officers wrote in their diaries that the Desna river
was the border between Severia
and Ukranien, and further "the city of Baturin, that was the capital of Okranien and Field Marshal Matzeppa's residence" and when Mazepa entered the Swedish headquarters he brought some "distinguished Ukrainian cossacks".
After the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
, the word fell into disuse. The Cossack state became the autonomous Hetmanate
owing fealty to Muscovy, and eventually became the Russian imperial guberniya
of Little Russia
(Malorossija). The name Ukraine stuck to the Cossack territories near Kharkiv
, alternatively known as the Sloboda Ukraine
.
During the nineteenth century a cultural and political debate arose among Ukrainians and others about their national status, in both Imperial Russia and Austro-Hungarian Galicia. The 'Russophiles
', who saw Moscow and St. Petersburg as the centres of East Slavic culture considered themselves ethnic Little Russians (Malorossy), part of the "Russian" (i.e. East Slavic) people. The 'Old Ruthenians' in Galicia saw themselves as inheritors of the heritage of Kievan Rus’ through the Galician-Volhynian Kingdom
. They stuck to the traditional self-appellation Ruthenians
(Rusyny, as opposed to Russkije 'Russians', both words being cognates of Rus’).
However, others saw themselves as an independent nation of East Slavs, south of Russia and stretching between Poland and the Caucasus. In the 1830s, Nikolay Kostomarov
and his Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
in Kiev started to use the name Ukrainians (Ukrajinci). Their work was suppressed by Russian authorities, and associates including Taras Shevchenko
were sent into internal exile, but the idea gained acceptance. It was also taken up by Volodymyr Antonovych
and the Khlopomany ('peasant-lovers'), former Polish gentry in Eastern Ukraine, and later by the 'Ukrainophiles' in Galicia, including Ivan Franko
. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Ukrajina superseded Malorossija in popularity and came to be applied to the whole of modern-day Ukraine, minus the Crimea
.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917
, the word ukraina finally became a country name by being applied to a specific geographic territory. The Ukrainian People's Republic
(later incorporating the West Ukrainian People's Republic), the Ukrainian State under the Hetmanate
, and the Bolshevik Party which created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by 1920 (helping found the Soviet Union
in 1922), each named their state Ukraine. In 1991, Ukraine
became an independent state.
it was popular to trace the origin of the country name to an ancient ethnonym. After this pseudo-historical view was discarded, two main versions of the etymology emerged. Naturally, the versions have different implications from a nationalist point of view. They are also based on different possible or certain meanings of the lexeme ukraina as occurring in historical sources (see above) "borderland" or simply "land", also "in-land" or "home-land", "principality". Old slavic word "kraina" also means "country"; "u-kraina" means "in-country" or "my-country".
's http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=%2Fusr%2Flocal%2Fshare%2Fstarling%2Fmorpho&morpho=1&basename=%5Cusr%5Clocal%5Cshare%5Cstarling%5Cmorpho%5Cvasmer%5Cvasmer&first=1&text_word=%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0&method_word=substring&text_general=&method_general=substring&text_origin=&method_origin=substring&text_trubachev=&method_trubachev=substring&text_editorial=&method_editorial=substring&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=wordetymological dictionary of Russian]) is that the modern name of the country is derived from the term "ukraina" in the sense ‘borderland, frontier region, marches’ etc. These meanings can be derived from the Proto-Slavic
root *kraj-, meaning ‘edge, border’. Contemporary parallels for this are Russian
okraina ‘outskirts’ and kraj ‘border district’.
This would be a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark
, which originally also denoted a border region (in this case of the Holy Roman Empire
, cf. Marches
).
In the sixteenth century, the only specific ukraina mentioned very often in Polish
and Ruthenian
texts was the south-eastern borderland around Kiev, and thus ukraina came to be synonymous with ‘the voivodship of Kiev’ and later ‘the region around Kiev’. In the nineteenth century, when Ukrainian romanticism and nationalism came into existence this name was adopted as the name of the country.
This version is supported by the fact that in some medieval Latin maps and documents, the word Ukraine is explained or translated as Marginalia. On a map of Russia, published in Amsterdam in 1645, the sparsely inhabited region to the north of the Azov sea is called Okraina and is characterized to the proximity to the Dikoia pole (Wild Fields
), a posing a constant threat of raids of Turkic nomads (Crimean Tatars
and the Nogai Horde
). There is also a special map of the Lower Dnieper region by Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan called "Delineatio Generalis Camporum Desertorum vulga Ukraina" (General illustration of desert planes, in common speech Ukraine).
kraina and Russian
and Polish
kraj, all meaning ‘country’.
Pivtorak starts from the meaning of kraj as ‘land parcel, territory’ as attested in many Slavic languages and states that it acquired from early on the meaning ‘a tribe's territory’; *ukraj and *ukrajina would then mean "a separated land parcel, a separate part of a tribe's territory". Later, as the Kievan Rus disintegrated in the 12th century, its ukrainas would become independent principalities, hence the new (and earliest actually attested) meaning of ukraina as ‘principality’. Still later, lands that became part of Lithuania (Chernigov and Seversk Principalities, Kiev Principality, Pereyaslav Principality and the most part of the Volyn Principality) were sometimes called Lithuanian ukraina, while lands that became part of Poland (Halych Principality and part of the Volyn Principality) were called Polish Ukrayina. At the same time, Pivtorak claims that the words Okraina and Ukraine always had strictly separate meanings, which has been countered by other historical sources.
In addition, some have derived the same meaning ‘region, principality, country’ from another meaning of the word *kraj-, namely ‘to cut’—as in Church Slavonic (kroiti), (krajati)—that is, ‘the land someone carved out for themselves’.
, the country was formerly often referred to with the definite article, that is, the Ukraine (as in the Netherlands, the Gambia
, the Bronx
, the Congo
, and the Sudan), and occasionally still is. However, usage without the article is now more frequent. This approach has also become established in journalism and diplomacy since the country's independence (for example, within the style guides of The Economist
, The Guardian
and The Times
). The use of the definite article is standard in some other languages such as French
or German
, although the latter is generally required for all non-neuter place names.
. Before independence in 1991, Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet Union
known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
, there was an official change in the way of saying "in Ukraine" following the country's independence. Traditional usage is na Ukrajini (with the preposition na, "on"), but recently Ukrainian authorities have begun using v Ukrajini (with the preposition v, "in", which is also used with most other country names). Linguistic prescription in Russian
dictates usage of na. Russian-language media in Ukraine are increasingly using the parallel form v Ukraine. However, the media in Russia continue to use the standard na Ukraine. Note that the preposition na is also used for some regions of Russia as well as with Rus, the historical homeland of Eastern Slavs (na Rusi).
The preposition na continues to be used with Ukraine (and with Rus') in other Slavic languages
, including Polish
, Czech
and Slovak
. This is a usage typically found with lands that have not always been considered distinct political entities (for example, Polish also uses na with its names for Hungary
and Lithuania
, but also the regions of Masovia, Masuria
or Podlachia
).
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, a country in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
.
History
The word ukraina is first recorded in the fifteenth-century Hypatian CodexHypatian Codex
The Hypatian Codex is a compendium of three chronicles: the Primary Chronicle, Kiev Chronicle, and Galician-Volhynian Chronicle. It is the most important source of historical data for southern Rus'...
of the twelfth and thirteenth-century Primary Chronicle
Primary Chronicle
The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...
, whose 1187 entry on the death of Prince Volodymyr of Pereyaslav says “The Ukraina groaned for him”, (o nem že Ukraina mnogo postona). The term is also mentioned for the years 1189, 1213, 1280, and 1282 for various East Slavic lands (for example, Galician Ukrayina, etc.), possibly referring to different principalities of Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
(cf. Skljarenko 1991, Pivtorak 1998) or to different borderlands (Vasmer 1953–1958, Rudnyc’kyj and Sychynskyj 1949).
In the sixteenth century, both Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
and 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....
sources used the word Ukraina with specific reference to the large south-eastern Kiev Voivodeship, including the voivodships of Bratslav
Bratslav
Bratslav |Breslov]] as the name of a Hasidic group, which originated from this town) is a townlet in Ukraine, located in the Nemyriv Raion of Vinnytsia Oblast, by the Southern Bug river. It is a medieval European city having dramatically lost its importance during 19th-20th centuries...
after 1569 and 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...
after 1619.
Seventeenth-century Zaporozhian Cossacks used the term in a more poetic sense, to refer to their 'fatherland'. Western cartographers, including Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan and Johann Baptiste Homman, drew maps of "Ukraine" as the "land of the Cossacks". But the name seems to have been in common use when the Swedish army entered Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
in October 1708. The Swedish officers wrote in their diaries that the Desna river
Desna River
Desna is a river in Russia and Ukraine, left tributary of the Dnieper. The word means "right hand" in the Old East Slavic language. Its length is , and its drainage basin covers ....
was the border between Severia
Severia
Severia or Siveria is a historical region in present-day northern Ukraine and southwestern Russia, centered around the city of Novhorod-Siverskyi in Ukraine.-Severians:...
and Ukranien, and further "the city of Baturin, that was the capital of Okranien and Field Marshal Matzeppa's residence" and when Mazepa entered the Swedish headquarters he brought some "distinguished Ukrainian cossacks".
After the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
, the word fell into disuse. The Cossack state became the autonomous Hetmanate
Cossack Hetmanate
The Hetmanate or Zaporizhian Host was the Ruthenian Cossack state in the Central Ukraine between 1649 and 1782.The Hetmanate was founded by first Ukrainian hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the Khmelnytsky Uprising . In 1654 it pledged its allegiance to Muscovy during the Council of Pereyaslav,...
owing fealty to Muscovy, and eventually became the Russian imperial guberniya
Guberniya
A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...
of Little Russia
Little Russia
Little Russia , sometimes Little or Lesser Rus’ , is a historical political and geographical term in the Russian language referring to most of the territory of modern-day Ukraine before the 20th century. It is similar to the Polish term Małopolska of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
(Malorossija). The name Ukraine stuck to the Cossack territories near Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
, alternatively known as the Sloboda Ukraine
Sloboda Ukraine
Sloboda Ukraine was a historical region which developed and flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries on the southwestern frontier of the Tsardom of Russia....
.
Ukrainian Russophiles
The focus of this article is part of a general political movement in Western Ukraine of the nineteenth and early 20th century. The movement contained several competing branches: Moscowphiles, Ukrainophiles, Rusynphiles, and others....
', who saw Moscow and St. Petersburg as the centres of East Slavic culture considered themselves ethnic Little Russians (Malorossy), part of the "Russian" (i.e. East Slavic) people. The 'Old Ruthenians' in Galicia saw themselves as inheritors of the heritage of Kievan Rus’ through the Galician-Volhynian Kingdom
Halych-Volhynia
The Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia or Kingdom of Rus or Galicia–Vladimir was a Ruthenian state in the regions of Galicia and Volhynia during 1199–1349. Along with Novgorod and Vladimir-Suzdal, it was one of the three most important powers to emerge from the collapse of Kievan Rus'...
. They stuck to the traditional self-appellation Ruthenians
Ruthenians
The name Ruthenian |Rus']]) is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians...
(Rusyny, as opposed to Russkije 'Russians', both words being cognates of Rus’).
However, others saw themselves as an independent nation of East Slavs, south of Russia and stretching between Poland and the Caucasus. In the 1830s, Nikolay Kostomarov
Nikolay Kostomarov
Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov , of mixed Russian and Ukrainian origin, is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St...
and his Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius
The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev, Ukraine, at the time a part of the Russian Empire...
in Kiev started to use the name Ukrainians (Ukrajinci). Their work was suppressed by Russian authorities, and associates including Taras Shevchenko
Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
were sent into internal exile, but the idea gained acceptance. It was also taken up by Volodymyr Antonovych
Volodymyr Antonovych
Volodymyr Antonovych , was a prominent Ukrainian historian and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national awakening in the Russian Empire. As a historian, Antonovych, who was longtime Professor of History at the University of Kiev, represented a populist approach to Ukrainian history.This...
and the Khlopomany ('peasant-lovers'), former Polish gentry in Eastern Ukraine, and later by the 'Ukrainophiles' in Galicia, including Ivan Franko
Ivan Franko
Ivan Yakovych Franko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language....
. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Ukrajina superseded Malorossija in popularity and came to be applied to the whole of modern-day Ukraine, minus the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, the word ukraina finally became a country name by being applied to a specific geographic territory. The Ukrainian People's Republic
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic or Ukrainian National Republic was a republic that was declared in part of the territory of modern Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, eventually headed by Symon Petliura.-Revolutionary Wave:...
(later incorporating the West Ukrainian People's Republic), the Ukrainian State under the Hetmanate
Hetmanate
The Ukrainian State or The Hetmanate was a short-lived polity in Ukraine, installed by Ukrainian Cossacks and military organizations under the support of the Central Powers, after disbanding the Central Rada of the Ukrainian National Republic on 28 April 1918.-History:On April 29, 1918 the head...
, and the Bolshevik Party which created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by 1920 (helping found the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1922), each named their state Ukraine. In 1991, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
became an independent state.
Etymology
During the period of Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
it was popular to trace the origin of the country name to an ancient ethnonym. After this pseudo-historical view was discarded, two main versions of the etymology emerged. Naturally, the versions have different implications from a nationalist point of view. They are also based on different possible or certain meanings of the lexeme ukraina as occurring in historical sources (see above) "borderland" or simply "land", also "in-land" or "home-land", "principality". Old slavic word "kraina" also means "country"; "u-kraina" means "in-country" or "my-country".
‘borderland’
The traditional theory (which has been widely supported by historians and linguists in the 19–20th centuries, see e.g. Max VasmerMax Vasmer
Max Vasmer was a Russian-born German linguist who studied problems of etymology of Indo-European, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages and worked on history of Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, and Finno-Ugric peoples....
's http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=%2Fusr%2Flocal%2Fshare%2Fstarling%2Fmorpho&morpho=1&basename=%5Cusr%5Clocal%5Cshare%5Cstarling%5Cmorpho%5Cvasmer%5Cvasmer&first=1&text_word=%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0&method_word=substring&text_general=&method_general=substring&text_origin=&method_origin=substring&text_trubachev=&method_trubachev=substring&text_editorial=&method_editorial=substring&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=wordetymological dictionary of Russian]) is that the modern name of the country is derived from the term "ukraina" in the sense ‘borderland, frontier region, marches’ etc. These meanings can be derived from the Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic language
Proto-Slavic is the proto-language from which Slavic languages later emerged. It was spoken before the seventh century AD. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic...
root *kraj-, meaning ‘edge, border’. Contemporary parallels for this are 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...
okraina ‘outskirts’ and kraj ‘border district’.
This would be a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, which originally also denoted a border region (in this case of the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
, cf. Marches
Marches
A march or mark refers to a border region similar to a frontier, such as the Welsh Marches, the borderland between England and Wales. During the Frankish Carolingian Dynasty, the word spread throughout Europe....
).
In the sixteenth century, the only specific ukraina mentioned very often in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
and Ruthenian
Ruthenian language
Ruthenian, or Old Ruthenian , is a term used for the varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth....
texts was the south-eastern borderland around Kiev, and thus ukraina came to be synonymous with ‘the voivodship of Kiev’ and later ‘the region around Kiev’. In the nineteenth century, when Ukrainian romanticism and nationalism came into existence this name was adopted as the name of the country.
This version is supported by the fact that in some medieval Latin maps and documents, the word Ukraine is explained or translated as Marginalia. On a map of Russia, published in Amsterdam in 1645, the sparsely inhabited region to the north of the Azov sea is called Okraina and is characterized to the proximity to the Dikoia pole (Wild Fields
Wild Fields
The Wild Field or the Wilderness is a historical term used in the Polish–Lithuanian documents of the 16th and 18th centuries referring to forest steppes and steppes of the Black sea and Azov sea regions...
), a posing a constant threat of raids of Turkic nomads (Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
and the Nogai Horde
Nogai Horde
The Nogai Horde was a confederation of about eighteen Turkic and Mongol tribes that occupied the Pontic-Caspian steppe from about 1500 until they were pushed west by the Kalmyks and south by the Russians in the 17th century. The Mongol tribe called the Manghits constituted a core of the Horde...
). There is also a special map of the Lower Dnieper region by Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan called "Delineatio Generalis Camporum Desertorum vulga Ukraina" (General illustration of desert planes, in common speech Ukraine).
‘region, country’
Some modern Ukrainian scholars such as H.P. Pivtorak believe that the name is derived from ukraina in the sense of ‘region, principality, country’ (an alternative etymology would be to derive this meaning from the previously mentioned one by generalization). Many medieval occurrences of the word can be interpreted as having that meaning. In this sense, the word can be associated with contemporary Ukrainian krajina, BelarusianBelarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
kraina and 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...
and Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
kraj, all meaning ‘country’.
Pivtorak starts from the meaning of kraj as ‘land parcel, territory’ as attested in many Slavic languages and states that it acquired from early on the meaning ‘a tribe's territory’; *ukraj and *ukrajina would then mean "a separated land parcel, a separate part of a tribe's territory". Later, as the Kievan Rus disintegrated in the 12th century, its ukrainas would become independent principalities, hence the new (and earliest actually attested) meaning of ukraina as ‘principality’. Still later, lands that became part of Lithuania (Chernigov and Seversk Principalities, Kiev Principality, Pereyaslav Principality and the most part of the Volyn Principality) were sometimes called Lithuanian ukraina, while lands that became part of Poland (Halych Principality and part of the Volyn Principality) were called Polish Ukrayina. At the same time, Pivtorak claims that the words Okraina and Ukraine always had strictly separate meanings, which has been countered by other historical sources.
In addition, some have derived the same meaning ‘region, principality, country’ from another meaning of the word *kraj-, namely ‘to cut’—as in Church Slavonic (kroiti), (krajati)—that is, ‘the land someone carved out for themselves’.
"Ukraine" versus "The Ukraine"
In EnglishEnglish 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...
, the country was formerly often referred to with the definite article, that is, the Ukraine (as in the Netherlands, the Gambia
The Gambia
The Republic of The Gambia, commonly referred to as The Gambia, or Gambia , is a country in West Africa. Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline on the Atlantic Ocean in the west....
, the Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, the Congo
Republic of the Congo
The Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...
, and the Sudan), and occasionally still is. However, usage without the article is now more frequent. This approach has also become established in journalism and diplomacy since the country's independence (for example, within the style guides of The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
). The use of the definite article is standard in some other languages such as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
or German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, although the latter is generally required for all non-neuter place names.
Conventional name
Ukraine is both the conventional short and long name of the country. This name is stated in the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence and ConstitutionConstitution of Ukraine
The Constitution of Ukraine is the nation's fundamental law. The constitution was adopted and ratified at the 5th session of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on 28 June 1996. The constitution was passed with 315 ayes out of 450 votes possible .Other laws and other normative legal acts of Ukraine...
. Before independence in 1991, Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Preposition usage in Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic languages
In the Ukrainian languageUkrainian 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....
, there was an official change in the way of saying "in Ukraine" following the country's independence. Traditional usage is na Ukrajini (with the preposition na, "on"), but recently Ukrainian authorities have begun using v Ukrajini (with the preposition v, "in", which is also used with most other country names). Linguistic prescription in 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...
dictates usage of na. Russian-language media in Ukraine are increasingly using the parallel form v Ukraine. However, the media in Russia continue to use the standard na Ukraine. Note that the preposition na is also used for some regions of Russia as well as with Rus, the historical homeland of Eastern Slavs (na Rusi).
The preposition na continues to be used with Ukraine (and with Rus') in other Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, including Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
and Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
. This is a usage typically found with lands that have not always been considered distinct political entities (for example, Polish also uses na with its names for Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and 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...
, but also the regions of Masovia, Masuria
Masuria
Masuria is an area in northeastern Poland famous for its 2,000 lakes. Geographically, Masuria is part of two adjacent lakeland districts, the Masurian Lake District and the Iława Lake District...
or Podlachia
Podlachia
Podlachia, Podlasie or Podlesia is a historical region in the eastern part of Poland and western Belarus. It is located between the Biebrza River in the north and its natural continuation to the south — the Polesie area...
).
Phonetics and orthography
Among the western European languages, there is inter-language variation (and even sometimes intra-language variation) in the phonetic vowel quality of the ai of Ukraine, and its written expression. It is variously:- Treated as a diphthong, in some languages [ai] (for example, German Ukraine uˈkʀainə) and in others [ei] (for example, English Ukraine ˈjuːkreɪn)
- Treated as a pure vowel (for example, French Ukraine ykʁɛn)
- Transformed in other ways (for example, Spanish Ucrania uˈkɾanja)
- Treated as two juxtaposed vowel sounds, with some phonetic degree of an approximant [j] between that may or may not be recognized phonemically. This version of pronunciation is sometimes represented orthographically with a dieresis, or tréma (for example, Dutch Oekraïne or Ukraïne, an often-seen Latin-alphabet transliteration of Україна that is an alternative to Ukrayina). This version most closely resembles the vowel quality of the Ukrainian version of the word. This treatment is sometimes heard or seen in German and French, although it may not be regarded as standard in those languages.
See also
- Etymology of Rus’ and derivatives
- List of etymologies of country subdivision names: "Ukraine"
- Kiev: "Kiev or Kyiv?"
- ToponymyToponymyToponymy is the scientific study of place names , their origins, meanings, use and typology. The word "toponymy" is derived from the Greek words tópos and ónoma . Toponymy is itself a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds...