Originally, the name
Rus (Русь,
Rus’) referred to the
peopleThe Rus' were the historic population of the medieval Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus'.One of the earliest written sources mentioning the people called Rus in the form of Rhos dates back to year 839 AD in a Royal Frankish chronicle Annales Bertiniani, identified as a Germanic tribe called Swedes...
, the
regionRus is an ethno-cultural region in Eastern Europe inhabited by Eastern Slavs. Historically, it comprises the northern part of Ukraine, the north-western part of Russia, Belarus and some eastern parts of Poland and Slovakia....
and the medieval states (9th to 12th centuries):
Rus' KhaganateThe Rus' Khaganate was a polity that flourished during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe...
and
Kievan Rus'Kievan Rus , usually written simply Kievan Rus and sometimes Kyivan Rus, was a medieval state which existed from approximately 880 to the middle of the 13th century...
polities. The territories of the latter are today distributed among
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
and a part of the European section of the Russian Federation. The name of
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
that came into use in the 17th century is derived from
Rus.
To distinguish the medieval "Rus" state from other states that derived from it, modern historiography calls it "
Kievan Rus'Kievan Rus , usually written simply Kievan Rus and sometimes Kyivan Rus, was a medieval state which existed from approximately 880 to the middle of the 13th century...
." Its predecessor, the 9th-century "
Rus' KhaganateThe Rus' Khaganate was a polity that flourished during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe...
" is a somewhat hypothetical state whose existence is inferred from a handful of early medieval Byzantine and Persian/Arabic sources that mention that the Rus people were governed by a
khaganKhagan or Great Khan Khagan or Great Khan Khagan or Great Khan ((Old Turkic ; ; ; alternatively spelled Chagan, Khaghan, Kagan, Kağan, Qagan, Qaghan), is a title of imperial rank in the Turkic and Mongolian languages equal to the status of emperor and someone who rules a Khaganate (empire, greater...
.
"
Rus'" as a state had no proper name; by its inhabitants it was called "ruska zemlya" (with
ruska alternatively spelled
rouska,
ruska,
rus'ka, and
russka), which might be translated as "Land of the
RusThe Rus' were the historic population of the medieval Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus'.One of the earliest written sources mentioning the people called Rus in the form of Rhos dates back to year 839 AD in a Royal Frankish chronicle Annales Bertiniani, identified as a Germanic tribe called Swedes...
". The word "russka" is an adjective: the morpheme
-sk- is used to form adjectives in Slavic;
-a is a grammatical ending for feminine adjectives (namely,
zemlya, "land", is grammatically feminine in Slavic). In similar fashion,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
is called
Polska by its inhabitants, that is,
Pol-sk-a, originally being the adjective
Polish (land).
Etymology
The origin of the name is a matter of considerable dispute. Sometimes referred to as
Normanist theory, the hypothesis of E. Kunik and
Vilhelm ThomsenVilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen was a Danish linguist. In 1893, he deciphered the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions in advance of his rival, Wilhelm Radloff...
has met with the widest acceptance. According to them this appellation derives from the
Baltic-Finnic languagesThe Baltic-Finnic languages, or Finnic, spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people, are a branch of the Uralic language family....
. The name of
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
in
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
is Ruotsi; in
EstonianEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
: Rootsi. This name is commonly held to be derived from
RoslagenRoslagen is the name of the coastal areas of Uppland province in Sweden, which also constitutes the northern part of the Stockholm archipelago....
, the coastal areas of the
UpplandUppland is a historical province or landskap on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital. It borders Södermanland, Västmanland and Gästrikland. It is also bounded by lake Mälaren and the Baltic sea...
province in Sweden. The Danish scholar T.E. Karsten has pointed out that the territory now occupying the areas of Uppland, Södermanland and East Gotland in ancient times was known as
Rođer or
rođin. Thomsen accordingly has suggested that
Rođer probably derived from
rođsmenn or
rođskarlar, meaning seafarers or rowers.
It has been also suggested that the name
Rus might have originated from the IranicThe Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
name of the Volga RiverThe Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through western Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including its capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage basin...
(by F.Knauer Moscow 1901), as well as from the Rosh of EzekielAccording to religious texts, Ezekiel was a priest in the Bible who prophesied for 22 years sometime in the 6th century BC in the form of visions while exiled in Babylon, as recorded in...
. Prof. George VernadskyGeorge Vernadsky , Russian: Гео́ргий Влади́мирович Верна́дский) was a Russian-American historian and an author of numerous books on Russian history.- European years :...
has suggested a derivation from the Roxolani or from the AryanAryan is an English language loanword denoting variously*in historical or dated usage,**the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers, viz. the Iranian and Indo-Aryan peoples**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers,...
term ronsa
(moisture, water). There is a recurrence of river names like Ros in Eastern Europe.
Theories of native Slavic origins for "Rus", known as
Anti-Normanist theories, garner narrower support among western scholars but are more popular within Russian historical thought. Suggested origins for "Rus'" include:
- The Sarmatian of the Roxolani, who inhabited southern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania (from the Old- Persian
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
rokhs, meaning light, white);
- One of two rivers in Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
, the Ros and Rusna, near KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
and Pereyaslav, respectively, whose names are derived from a postulated Slavic term for "water", akin to rosa (dew), rusalka (water nymph), ruslo (stream bedA stream bed is the channel bottom of a stream, river or creek; the physical confine of the normal water flow. The lateral confines or channel margins, during all but flood stage, are known as the stream banks or river banks. In fact, a flood occurs when a stream overflows its banks and flows onto...
). (The relation to the SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
'rasa'—water, juice, essence—suggests itself.)
- Rusiy (Русый), light-brown, said of hair color (the translation "reddish-haired", cognate with the Slavic "ryzhiy", "red-haired", is not quite exact);
- A postulated proto-Slavic word for "bear
Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...
", cognate with arctos and ursus.
The Russian linguist I.N. Danilevskiy, in his
Ancient Rus as Seen by Contemporaries and Descendants, argued against these theories, stating that the anti-Normanists neglected the realities of the Ancient Slavic languages and that the nation name
Rus' could not have arisen from any of the proposed origins:
- The populace of the Ros River would have been known as Roshane;
- Red-haired or bear-origined people would have ended their self-name with the plural -ane or -ichi, and not with the singular -s';
- Most theories are based on a Ros- root, and in Ancient Slavic an o would never have become the u in Rus'.
Danilevskiy further argued that the term followed the general pattern of Slavic names for neighboring
Finno-UgricFinno-Ugric can refer to:* Finno-Ugric languages* Finno-Ugric peoples...
peoples—the
Chud'Chud or Chude is a term historically applied in the early Russian annals to several Finno-Ugric peoples in the area of what is now Finland, Estonia and Northwestern Russia....
,
Ves',
Perm'Permic languages are a subgroup of the Finno-Ugric language family. They are spoken in the Ural Mountains of Russia.* Komi * Komi-Permyak* Udmurt...
,
Sum'Suomi is a Finnish word that most commonly refers to either:*Finland or *Finnish language or or suomen kieliSuomi may also refer to:*Suomi M-31 SMG, a Finnish submachine gun*Verner E. Suomi, father of satellite meteorology-See also:...
, etc.—but that the only possible word that it could be based on,
Ruotsi, presented a historical dead-end, since no such tribal or national name was known from non-Slavic sources. "Ruotsi" is, however, the Finnish name for
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
.
Furthermore, Danilevskiy shows that the oldest historical source, the
Primary ChronicleThe 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 :The original compilation was long considered to be the...
, is very inconsistent in what it refers to as the "Rus'": in adjacent passages, the Rus' are grouped with
VarangiansThe Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were Vikings, Norsemen, who went eastwards and southwards through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine mainly in the 9th and 10th centuries...
, with the Slavs, and even set apart from the Slavs and Varangians. Danilevskiy therefore proposes a theory that the
Rus' were originally not a nation but a
social classSocial classes are the hierarchical arrangements of people in society as economic or cultural groups. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political economists and social historians...
, and thus explains all the irregularities in the 'Primary Chronicle
, and the lack of early non-Slavic sources.
Early evidence
In Old East Slavic literature, the East SlavsThe East Slavs are a Slavic ethnic group, the speakers of East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of Kievan Rus, by the seventeenth century they evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples.-Sources:...
refer to themselves as "[muzhi] ruskie
" ("Rus men") or, rarely, "rusichi
." The East Slavs are thought to have adopted this name from the Varangian elite, which was first mentioned in the 830s in the Annals of Saint Bertan
. The Annals
recount that Holy Roman Emperor Louis IILouis II the Younger was the King of Italy from 844 and then Emperor from 855 until his death.He was the eldest son of the Emperor Lothair I and Ermengarde of Tours. He was designated King of Italy in 839 and took up his residence in that country and was crowned king at Rome by Pope Sergius II on...
's court at Ingelheim, in 839 (the same year as the first appearance of Varangians in ConstantinopleConstantinople was the imperial capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire...
), was visited by a delegation from the Byzantine emperor. The delegates included two men who called themselves "Rhos" ("Rhos vocari dicebant
"). Louis inquired about their origins and learned that they were SwedesSwedes are a Scandinavian people, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries....
. Fearing that they were spies for their brothers, the Danes, he incarcerated them. They were also mentioned in the 860s by Byzantine Patriarch Photius under the name, "Rhos
."
Rusiyyah
was used by Ibn Fadlan for Varangians near AstrakhanAstrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea. Population: 502,800 ; 504,501 ; 509,210 .-Medieval history:Astrakhan' is situated in the Volga Delta, rich...
, and by the Persian traveler Ibn Rustah who visited Novgorod and described how the Rus' exploited the Slavs.
As for the Rus, they live on an island ... that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy... They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and... sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from the Slav's lands... When a son is born, the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says, "I shall not leave you with any property: You have only what you can provide with this weapon."
(Ibn Rustah, according to National Geographic
, March 1985)
When the Varangians arrived in ConstantinopleConstantinople was the imperial capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire...
, the Byzantines considered and described the Rhos
(GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
Ρως
) as a different people from the Slavs. De Administrando ImperioDe Administrando Imperio is the commonly used Latin title of a scholarly work written in Greek, by the 10th-century Byzantine emperor Constantine VII...
http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/rus/texts/constp.html gives the names of the Dnieper cataracts in both Rhos
and Slavic
. The Rhos names are:
- Essoupi (Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
vesuppi
, "do not sleep");
Oulvorsi (Old Norse holmfors
, "island rapid");
Gelandri (Old Norse gjallandi
, "yelling, loudly ringing");
Aeifor (Old Norse eiforr
, "ever fierce");
Varouforos (Old Norse varufors
, "cliff rapid" or barufors
, "wave rapid");
Leanti (Old Norse leandi
, "seething", or hlæjandi
, "laughing"); and
Stroukoun (Old Norse strukum
, "rapid current").
According to the Primary ChronicleThe 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 :The original compilation was long considered to be the...
, a historical compilation attributed to the twelfth century, Rus
was a group of Varangians who lived on the other side of the Baltic seaThe Baltic Sea is a brackish inland sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and the...
, in Scandinavia. The Varangians were first expelled, then invited to rule the warring SlavicThe Slavic Peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in eastern and central Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans...
and Finnic tribes of Novgorod:
The four tribes who had been forced to pay tribute to the Varangians -
ChudChud or Chude is a term historically applied in the early Russian annals to several Finno-Ugric peoples in the area of what is now Finland, Estonia and Northwestern Russia....
s, Slavs, Merians and Krivichs drove the Varangians back beyond the sea, refused to pay them further tribute, and set out to govern themselves. But there was no law among them, and tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against the other. They said to themselves, "Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to custom. Thus they went overseas to the Varangians, to the Rus. These particular Varangians were known as Rus, just as some are called
SwedesSwedes are a Scandinavian people, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries....
, and others
NormansThe Normans were the people who gave their names to Normandy, a region in northern France. They descended from Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
and
AnglesThe Angles is a modern English word for a Germanic-speaking people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...
, and still others
Gotland' is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, it makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area. The region also includes the small islands of Fårö and Gotska Sandön to the north, and the tiny...
ers, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichs and the
VesVes may refer to:*VES*Veps, a Finno-Ugric people in northwestern Russia...
then said to the Rus, "Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come reign as princes, rule over us". Three brothers, with their kinfolk, were selected. They brought with them all the Rus and migrated.
The earliest written mention of the word 'Rus' or 'Russian' appears in the Primary Chronicle under the year 912. When describing a peace treaty signed by Varangian Oleg of NovgorodOleg of Novgorod was a Varangian prince who ruled all or part of the Rus people during the early tenth century. He is credited with moving the capital of Rus from Novgorod the Great to Kiev and, in doing so, he laid the foundation of the powerful state of Kievan Rus...
during his campaign on ConstantinopleThe Rus'-Byzantine War of 907 is associated in the Primary Chronicle with the name of Oleg of Novgorod. The chronicle implies that it was the most successful military operation of the Rus against the Byzantine Empire. Paradoxically, Greek sources do not mention it at all.- Primary Chronicle :The...
, it contains the following passage:
Oleg sent his men to make peace and sign a treaty between the Greeks and the Rus, saying thus: [...] "We are the Rus: Karl, Inegeld, Farlaf, Veremud, Rulav, Gudi, Ruald, Karn, Frelav, Ruar, Aktevu, Truan, Lidul, Vost, Stemid, sent by Oleg, the great prince of Rus, and all those under him, [...]
Quite tellingly, none of the Rus names listed are Slavic, but are Germanic and few are likely Finnic.
Later, the Primary Chronicle tells us, they conquered KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
and created Kievan Rus'Kievan Rus , usually written simply Kievan Rus and sometimes Kyivan Rus, was a medieval state which existed from approximately 880 to the middle of the 13th century...
. The territory they conquered was named after them as were, eventually, the local people (cf.
NormansThe Normans were the people who gave their names to Normandy, a region in northern France. They descended from Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
).
However, the Synod Scroll of the
Novgorod First ChronicleThe Novgorod First Chronicle or The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471 is the most ancient extant chronicle of the Novgorod Republic. It reflects a tradition different from the Kievan Primary Chronicle...
, which is partially based on the original list of the late 11th Century and partially on the Primary Chronicle, does not name the
VarangiansThe Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were Vikings, Norsemen, who went eastwards and southwards through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine mainly in the 9th and 10th centuries...
asked by the Chuds, Slavs and Krivichs to reign their obstreperous lands as the "Rus". One can assume that there was no original mention of the Varangians as the Rus as the old list predates the Primary Chronicle and the Synod Scroll only referred to the Primary Chronicle if the pages of the old list were blemished.
Other spellings used in Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries were as follows: Ruzi
, Ruzzi
, Ruzia
and Ruzari
. But perhaps the most popular term to refer to the Rus was Rugi
, a name of the ancient East Germanic tribe related to the GothsThe Goths were a heterogeneous East Germanic tribe. The historian Jordanes claimed that the Goths arrived from semi-legendary Scandza, believed to be somewhere in modern Götaland , and that a Gothic population had crossed the Baltic Sea before the 2nd century, lending their name to the region of...
. Olga of KievSaint Olga was a ruler of Kievan Rus as regent for her son, Svyatoslav.-Biography:...
, for instance, was called in the Frankish annals regina Rugorum
, that is, "the Queen of the Rugi."
In the eleventh century, the dominant term in the Latin tradition was Ruscia
. It was used, among others, by Thietmar of MerseburgThietmar may refer to:* Thietmar, Count of Merseburg * Thietmar, Margrave of Meissen * Thietmar of Prague , bishop* Thietmar of Merseburg , bishop and chronicler...
, Adam of BremenAdam of Bremen was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. He is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum .-Background:Little is known of his life other than hints from his own chronicles...
, Kozma of Prague and Pope Gregory VIIPope Saint Gregory VII , born Hildebrand of Sovana , was Pope from April 22, 1073, until his death...
in his letter to Izyaslav IIziaslav of Kiev may refer to:* Iziaslav I of Kiev , patronymic Yaroslavich* Iziaslav II of Kiev , patronymic Mstislavich* Iziaslav III of Kiev , patronymic Davidovich* Iziaslav IV Vladimirovich...
. Rucia
, Ruzzia
, Ruzsia
were alternative spellings.
During the twelfth century, Ruscia
gradually made way for two other Latin terms, Russia
Russia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Ruthenia
Ruthenia is a geographic and culturo-ethnic name applied to the parts of Eastern Europe populated by Eastern Slavic peoples, as well as to the past various states that existed in these territories. Essentially, the word is a Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...
. Russia
(also spelled Rossia
and Russie
) was a dominant Romance-languageThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
form, first used by Liutprand of CremonaLiutprand was a Lombard historian and author, and Bishop of Cremona....
in the 960s and then by Peter Damiani in the 1030s. It became ubiquitous in English and French documents in the twelfth century. Ruthenia
, first documented in the early twelfth-century AugsburgAugsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria in Germany. It is a College town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
annalsAnnals are a concise form of historical writing which record events chronologically, year by year.-Medieval:...
, was a Latin form preferred by the Papal chancellery (see RutheniaRuthenia is a geographic and culturo-ethnic name applied to the parts of Eastern Europe populated by Eastern Slavic peoples, as well as to the past various states that existed in these territories. Essentially, the word is a Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...
for more information).
From Rus to Russia
In modern English historiography, Kievan Rus
is the most common name for the ancient East Slavic state (often retaining the pedantically-correct apostrophe in Rus’
, a transliteration of the soft signThe soft sign is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short front vowel but in modern Slavic Cyrillic writing systems , it does not represent an individual sound, rather it indicates softening of the preceding consonant or just has a traditional orthographic...
, ь
) followed by Kievan Russia
, Ancient Russian state
, and, extremely rarely, Kievan Ruthenia
. It is also called the Princedom
or Principality of Kiev
, or just Kiev.
But
RusRuś may refer to the following places:*Ruś, Podlaskie Voivodeship *Ruś, Olsztyn County in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship *Ruś, Ostróda County in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship *Polish name for Rus...
actually has two meanings:
- a small princedom around Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
, incorporating the cities of VyshgorodVyshgorod may refer to:*Vyshhorod a residence of the medieval Kievan rulers, now a town in Kiev Oblast, Ukraine*Vyshgorod, Russia, a village in Ryazan Oblast, Russia...
and Pereyaslav (roughly within a 200-kilometre radius of Kiev), and
- a vast political state (of the territories mentioned above) ruled first from Novgorod and then from Kiev.
The latter country was subsequently divided into several parts. The most influential were, in the south, Halych-Volyn Rus; and, in the north, Vladimir-Suzdal Rus and the
Novgorod RepublicThe Novgorod Republic was a large mediæval Russian state which stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Ural Mountains between the 12th and 15th centuries, centred on the city of Novgorod...
. The southern part fell under Catholic Polish influence; the northern part, under much weaker Mongol influence, and went on to become a loose federation of principalities.
Byzantine hierarchs established their own names (in
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
) for the northern and southern parts: respectively, Μακρα Ρωσία
(Makra Rosia
, Great RussiaGreat Russia is an obsolete name formerly applied to the territories of "Russia proper", the land that formed the core of Muscovy and, later, Russia...
) and Μικρα Ρωσία
(Mikra Rosia
, Russia Minor or Little RussiaLittle Russia, sometimes Little or Lesser Rus’ , was the name for a part of the territory of modern-day Ukraine before the twentieth century. Accordingly, derivatives such as "Little Russian" were commonly applied to the people, language, and culture of the area...
).
By the fifteenth century, the rulers of the Grand Duchy of MoscowThe Grand Duchy of Moscow was a medieval Russian polity centered on Moscow between 1340 and 1547. The Grand Duchy of Moscow, as the state is known in Russian records, has been referred to by many Western sources as Muscovy. However, this term is also sometimes applied to the Tsardom of Russia...
had reunited the northern parts of the former Kievan Rus. Ivan III of Moscow was the first local ruler to become universally recognized under the title Grand Duke of all Rus
. This title was used by the Grand Dukes of Vladimir since early 14th century, and the first prince to use it was Mikhail YaroslavichMikhail Yaroslavich , also known as Michael of Tver, was a Prince of Tver who ruled as Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1304 until 1314 and again from 1315-1318...
of Tver. Ivan III was styled by Emperor Maximilian IMaximilian I may refer to:*Maximilian of Mexico, reigned April 1864 to May 1867*Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, reigned 1508 to 1519*Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, reigned 1597 to September 1651...
as rex albus
and rex Russiae
. Later, Rus’
— in the Russian languageRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
— evolved into the Byzantine-influenced form, Rossiya
(Russia is Ρωσία [Rosia
] in Greek).
In the modern Russian language, there are two adjectives, each of which may be translated as "Russian." These are: russky
(русский), relating to the Russian people and their language; and rossiysky
(российский), relating to the Russian state. However, in the modern Ukrainian language, rus’kyy
(руський) refers exclusively to Rus’
, whereas rosiys’kyy
(російський) refers to everything belonging to Russia: people, language, and state.
The
Ss in
Russia
While constant in Western sources, in Slavic documents two historic spellings are common, with one or two
s's (
Rosiya or
Rossiya (noun), and
ruskiy or
russkiy (adjective)). In earlier sources, dating back to Kievan Rus, the spelling with one
s is found most often; while in modern Russian two
s's are used. The doubling of the
s can occasionally be found as far back as Kievan Rus, however the one-
s variant was prevalent until the 17th century; for example, the 16th-century correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Prince Kurbsky constantly uses the one-
s spelling.
By the 16th century, the Slavic adjective "
russkiy" ("Russian") is usually spelled with two
s's, while the Greek-influenced noun "
Rosiya" is spelled with one
s, to conform to the original Greek spelling. The two-
s spelling of the noun then follows the adjective in the 17th century. Finally, the two-
s spelling of both the noun and the adjective in Russian was made standard by Lomonosov's
Grammar (1755).
From Rus to Ukraine
Meanwhile the southwestern territories of historical Rus had been incorporated into the
Grand Duchy of LithuaniaThe Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an Eastern and Central European state from the 12th /13th century until 1795. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the pagan Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija...
(whose full name was
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus' and Samogitia). The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as a whole, was dominated by Rus, as it was populated mainly by Rus, many of its nobles were of Rus origin, and a descendant of the
Old East Slavic languageOld East Slavic, also known as Old Russian was a vernacular literary language used in 10th-15th centuries by East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' and states which evolved after the collapse of the Kievan Rus'...
,
RuthenianRuthenian 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....
, is the language of most surviving official documents prior to 1697 (excluding Polish).
The southern territories dominated by Lithuania have cognate names in
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
and
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
, respectively:
- Belorussia and Ruś Biała — White Ruthenia, White Russia
"White Russia" is a name that has historically been applied to various regions in Eastern Europe, most often to that which roughly corresponds to the eastern part of present-day Belarus including the cities of Polatsk, Vitsyebsk, Mahiliou....
or BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
;
- Chernaya Rus and Ruś Czarna — Black Ruthenia
Black Ruthenia, Black Rus or Black Russia are variant conventional term used for a region around Navahrudak , in the western part of contemporary Belarus on the upper reaches of the Neman River. The phrase first appeared in Western European sources circa 1360 but referring to Red Ruthenia...
, part of modern BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
; and
- Chervonaya Rus and Ruś Czerwona — Red Ruthenia
Red Ruthenia is the name used since medieval times to refer to the area known as Eastern Galicia prior to World War I....
, now a small strip in PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
(PrzemyślPrzemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 2006, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship....
) and the rest in UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
(GaliciaGalicia is a historical region in East-Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine, named after the Ukraіniаn city of Halych. The nucleus of historic Galicia is formed of three regions of western Ukraine: Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.-Tribal area:The region has a turbulent...
). Poland called this area the "Ruthenian VoivodeshipRuthenia Voivodeship was an administrative division of the Kingdom of Poland . Together with Bełz Voivodeship, it formed Lesser Poland Province with its capital city in Kraków. Part of Lesser Poland region...
."
While Russian descendants of the Rus called themselves
Russkiye, the residents of
these lands called themselves
Rusyny, Ruthenians.
The word "Ukraine" (
ukraina) is first recorded in the fifteenth-century
Hypatian CodexThe 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 ChronicleThe 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 :The original compilation was long considered to be the...
, 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 , usually written simply Kievan Rus and sometimes Kyivan Rus, was a medieval state which existed from approximately 880 to the middle of the 13th century...
(cf. Skljarenko 1991, Pivtorak 1998) or to different borderlands (Vasmer 1953-1958, Rudnyc’kyj and Sychynskyj 1949).
In 1654, under the
Treaty of PereyaslavThe Treaty of Pereyaslav was concluded in 1654 in the Ukrainian city of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi , at a meeting between the Cossacks of the Zaporizhian Host and Tsar Alexey I of Tsardom of Russia, during the Khmelnytsky rebellion...
, the Cossack lands of the
Zaporozhian HostThe Zaporozhian Cossacks were Cossacks who lived in Zaporozhia, in Central Ukraine. The Zaporozhian Host grew rapidly in the 15th century by serfs fleeing the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth....
came under the protection of Muscovy, including the
HetmanateThe Hetmanate or officially Viysko Zaporozke was the Ukrainian Cossack state in the central and north-eastern regions of Ukraine between 1649 and 1775...
of
Left-bank UkraineLeft-bank Ukraine is a historic name of the part of Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnieper River, comprising the modern-day oblasts of Chernihiv, Poltava and Sumy as well as the eastern parts of the Kiev and Cherkasy....
, and Zaporozhia. In Russia, these lands were referred to as
Little RussiaLittle Russia, sometimes Little or Lesser Rus’ , was the name for a part of the territory of modern-day Ukraine before the twentieth century. Accordingly, derivatives such as "Little Russian" were commonly applied to the people, language, and culture of the area...
(
Malorossiya). Colonies established in lands ceded from the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
along the
Black Seaur a loser!The Black Sea is an inland sea bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and various straits. The Bosporus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects it to...
were called New Russia (
Novorossiya).
In the final decades of the eighteenth century, the
Russian EmpireThe 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...
,
PrussiaPrussia was a historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries this state had substantial influence on German and European history...
and Austria dismembered the
Polish-Lithuanian CommonwealthThe Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed by the union of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569. The new Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th-century Europe....
in a series of
partitionsThe Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The partitions were carried out by Prussia, Russia and Habsburg Austria dividing up the Commonwealth lands...
, and all of historic Rus, save for Galicia, became part of the Russian Empire.
During a period of cultural revival after 1840, the members of a secret ideological society in
KievKiev or Kyiv , is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300...
, the
Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and MethodiusThe 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...
, revived the use of the name
Ukrayina for the homeland of the "Little Russian" people. They drew upon a name which had been used by 17th-century Ukrainian Cossacks. It had earlier appeared on 16th-century maps of Kiev and its local area (Kievan Rus).
Ukrayina was originally an Old East Slavic word for a "borderland", attested as far back as the 12th century.
See
krajina-Ethymology:In Croatian, it refers to area around certain smaller city. The term is mostly applied in Zagora and neighbouring areas of Zagora on the west....
for cognates.
In the early twentieth century, the name
Ukraine became more widely accepted, and was used as the official name for the short-lived
Ukrainian People's RepublicThe Ukrainian People's Republic was a republic in part of the territory of modern Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, eventually headed by Symon Petliura.-Tsentralna Rada:The socialist-dominated Tsentralna Rada was established on...
,
West Ukrainian National RepublicThe West Ukrainian National Republic was a short-lived republic that existed in late 1918 and early 1919 in eastern Galicia, that claimed parts of Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia and included the cities of Lviv, Peremyshl', Kolomyia, and Stanislaviv.The coat of arms of the West Ukrainian People's...
and Ukrainian Hetmanate, and for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Application of the name "Ruthenia" (
Rus) became narrowed to Carpathian RutheniaCarpathian Ruthenia, aka Transcarpathian Ruthenia, Transcarpathian Ukraine, Zakarpattia, Rusinko, Subcarpathian Rus, Subcarpathia is a small region in Central Europe, now...
(Karpats’ka Rus’
), south of the Carpathian mountainsThe Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the largest mountain range in Europe...
in the Kingdom of HungaryHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
, where many local Slavs consider themselves RusynsRusyns are an Eastern Slavic ethnic group related to Ukrainians who speak a Western Ukrainian language or dialect known as Rusyn. The group unites a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the ethnonym Ukrainian to describe their ethnic identity in the early twentieth century...
. Carpathian Ruthenia incorporated the cities of Mukachiv (Rusyn: Mukachevo
; ), UzhhorodUzhhorod is a city located in western Ukraine, at the border with Slovakia and near the border with Hungary. It is the administrative center of the Zakarpattia Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Uzhhorodskyi Raion within the oblast...
and PrešovPrešov is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is the seat of the administrative Prešov Region . With a population of approximately 91,000, it is the third-largest city in the country.-Etymology:...
(Pryashiv
; ). Carpathian Rus had been part of the Hungarian Kingdom since 907 AD, and had been known as Magna Rus
but was also called Karpato-Rus’
or Zakarpattia.