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The name Ukraine (Template:Lang-uk, /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" (see the full text of the Chronicle). 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 ).

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 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 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 (helping found 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.

• The theory most accepted in the Template:Mainstream has it that the name is directly translated as 'borderland, frontier' (cf. Russian okraina 'outskirts' or Serboin or Croatian krajina; this would be a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark, cf. Marches). Howeverm, the critics of this hypothesis argue that such interpretation traces the word only to the more recent times, and claim that it is not reconciled with the usage in the historical narratives of the twelfth and subsequent centuries, where the word clearly refers to the different principalities of the Kievan Rus including its most central regions ("Kievan Ukrayina", "Pereyaslav Ukrayina", etc). On the other hand, the name Ukraina for the country is itself very young, and the 'old' etymology does not explain why this word should be used in this special sense, while in the twelfth century there had also been ukrainas in what is now Belarus and Russia. In the 16th century, the only 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 region around Kiev'. As Kiev later became one of the centres of Ukraine, this might have been the starting-point for the evolution of Ukraina as a placename.
• Another theory 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).
• Another theory, gaining the popularity, especially among the Ukrainian scholars, is that the name is derived the Old Slavic root *kraj-, meaning "cut", indicating the land the Rus' people (or their princes) carved out for themselves. The first known mentioning in the Kiev Chronicle of 1187 uses the word synonymously with principality, literally "land cut out for a Prince" (probably referring to the general feudal practice of a king dividing land between his sons). Over time, as the dominant self-identification paradigms were changing, the word's initial meaning "the land of the Prince" ("the Princedom", "our Princedom") transformed to a wider meaning "the land of the people", "our land" (cf. the contemporary Ukrainian word krajina - "country").

Syntax

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, usage without the article is becoming more frequent, and has 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 ). Some point the declining awareness of the name's etymology, similar to Denmark, which is used as a proper name and is not perceived as a compound "the Dane-mark" any longer, while Netherlands continues to be perceived as a plural "the nether lands".

Preposition usage in Ukrainian and Russian

In Ukrainian and Russian, there was a change in the usage of the preposition na or v with Ukraine following the country's independence. Traditional usage is na Ukrajini (loosely, at, as it were referring to a part of a larger entity), but recently Ukrainian authorities have been using v Ukrajini (in, referring to a spatially discrete entity), 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.

Alternative names

Originally the term "Rus'" was applied to the inhabitants of all Rus' principalities, today comprising parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. After the fall of Kiev, and until the eighteenth century, the term "Rus" was self-applied by the members of all three East Slavic nations, but the latinized version, "Ruthenian", was used to designate inhabitants of Ukraine and Belarus; while the ancestors of modern Russians were often referred to as Muscovites or Muscovite Russians by the name of their state that Poland called Muscovy. For the etymology of the terms Rus and Russia, see Etymology of Rus and derivatives.

"Ukraine", originally a geographic term, dates to the eleventh century. At that time, Ukraine was synonymous with Rus' proper (Rus' Propria). "Ruthenian" originally meant "Rus'", then Ukraine and Belarus, but later became limited to Ukraine alone, and then solely to West Ukrainians (Galicians). Originally it was a term applied to the Rus' by other Europeans (Poles, Germans, and Turks, especially).

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). {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
• Magocsi, Paul Robert (1996). "The name 'Ukraine'". A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 171–72. ISBN 0-8020-7820-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)

• Country name etymology
• Ukraine
• Ukrainian words