Name of Ukraine

The name Ukraine (Ukrainian: Україна, Ukrayina, /ukraˈjina/) has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century. Today it is the official name of Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe.

Cyrillic letters in this article are romanized using scientific transliteration.

History

The name is first recorded in the fifteenth-century Hypatian text of the twelfth and thirteenth-century Primary Chronicle, whose 1187 entry on the death of Prince Volodymyr of Pereiaslav says "The ukraïna groaned for him" (Paszkiewicz 1963, cited in Magocsi 1996:171). The term is also mentioned for the years 1189, 1213, 1280, and 1282 for various Ukrainian lands, but is used here and in other chronicles of Rus’ to describe a non-specific borderland, and not a particular place.

In subsequent centuries, the name was also taken to refer to the south-western borderlands of Muscovy, for example in the texts by Andrey Kurbsky and Grigory Kotoshikhin. Occasionally, the word had been used to apply to other borderlands of Muscovy as well: Ukraina za Okoju referred to the Upper Principalities, uralskie ukrainy referred to the lands stretching beyond the Ural. In two fifteenth-century Pskovian chronicles and the Tale of the Battle of Kulikovo, ukraina stood for the territory currently known as the Abrene district. Ukraina Terskaja still refers in local parlance to the southern shore of the Kola Peninsula (Vasmer [1]).

In the sixteenth century, Polish sources used the Polish form Ukrajina to describe the large eastern palatinate of Kiev, including Bratslav after 1569 and Chernihiv after 1619.

Seventeenth-century Cossacks of the Zaporozhian Host used the term in a more poetic sense, to refer to their 'fatherland' or their 'mother'. Western cartographers including Beauplan and Homman drew maps indicating "Ukraine is the land of the Cossacks." After the decline of Polish rule, the name 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 Kharkov, alternatively known as the Sloboda Ukraine (literally, 'borderland of the slobodas').

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 Great Russian 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-appelation 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 Mykola Kostomarov and his Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius 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 name Ukraine was finally applied to a specific geographic territory. The Ukrainian People's Republic (later incorporating the West Ukrainian National Republic), the Ukrainian Hetmanate, and the Bolshevik Party which created the Ukrainian SSR by 1920 (joining the Soviet Union in 1922), each named their state Ukraine. In 1991, Ukraine became an independent state.

Etymology

There are three main versions of the Slavic etymology for the name, all of them ultimately stem from the Proto-Slavic root *kraj-, meaning ‘to cut’. Opinions vary as to the immediate derivation.

• Mainstream theory has it that the name is directly translated as 'borderland, frontier' (cf. Russian okraina 'outskirts' or Serbo-Croatian krajina; this would be a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark, cf. Marches).
• Another one associates it with the Ukrainian word krajina 'country' (cf. also Belarusian kraina; these words can be compared to Polish kraj ‘country’; 'border region' is also one of the meanings of Ukrainian and Russian kraj).
• One fringe theory derives the name directly from the Ukrainian verb krajaty 'to cut', indicating the land the Rus' (or Ruthenians or Ukrainians) carved out for themselves.

Ukraine or the Ukraine?

In English, the country is sometimes referred to with the definite article, as the Ukraine, as in the Netherlands, the Gambia, the Sudan or the Congo. However, the usage without the article is becoming more common generally, and has become established in journalism since Ukraine's independence (for example, style guides of the Economist [2], the Guardian [3] and the Times [4]). Additionally, the usage of the definite article with Ukraine is subject to criticism because of the alleged implication that Ukraine is still merely a region rather than an independent state.

Preposition usage in Ukrainian and Russian

There was no change in Ukrainian or Russian usage with Ukraine's independence, as neither language contains either definite or indefinite articles. However there is a parallel concerning the usage of the preposition na or v with Ukraine, both in Ukrainian and in Russian. Traditional usage is na Ukrajini (loosely, 'at Ukraine'), but recently Ukrainian authorities have been using v Ukrajini ('in Ukraine'), as this preposition is used with most other country names. While in Ukrainian the newly-introduced usage of v Ukrajini took hold, the usage in Russian varies. Russian-language media in Ukraine are increasingly using this form. However, the media in Russia mostly use traditional na Ukraine, in some cases defending it as correct usage and discounting the Ukrainian government's authority over the Russian language.

See also Kiev or Kyiv? for a similar debate.

See also

• Etymology of Rus’ and derivatives
• List of subnational name etymologies: "Ukraine"
• Kiev: "Kiev or Kyiv?"
• Toponymy

References

• Gregorovich, Andrew (1994). Ukraine or 'the Ukraine'?. Forum Ukrainian Review No. 90 (Spring/Summer).
• Magocsi, Paul Robert (1996). "The name ‘Ukraine’" A History of Ukraine, 171–72, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-7820-6.
• Paszkiewicz, Henryk (1963). The Making of the Russian Nation.