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The name "Ukraine" (Ukrainian: Україна Ukrayina [ukrɑˈjinɑ]) derives from the Slavic words "u", meaning "within", and "kraj", meaning "land" or "border". Together, "u+kraij" means "within the borders" or more aptly in English, "the heartland". It was first used to define part of the territory of Kievan Rus' in the 12th century. The name has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century. In English, the traditional use was "the Ukraine", which is becoming less common according to Google Books word analytics and untill 1991 was short for "The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic", which was the dominating name for most of the 20th century.
Contents
History
The oldest mention of the word ukraina dates back to the year 1187. In connection with the death of the Volodymyr Hlibovych, the ruler of Principality of Pereyaslavl which was Kiev's southern shield against the Wild Fields, the Hypatian Codex says “ukraina groaned for him”, ѡ нем же оукраина много постона (o nem že ukraina mnogo postona). In the following decades and centuries this term was applied to fortified borderlands of different principalities of Rus' without a specific geographic fixation: Halych-Volhynia, Pskov, Ryazan etc.
After the south-western lands of former Rus' were subordinated to the Polish Crown in 1569, the territory from eastern Podolia to Zaporozhie got the unofficial name Ukraina due to its border function to the nomadic Tatar world in the south. The Polish chronicler Samuel Grądzki who wrote about the Khmelnytsky Uprising in 1660 explained the word Ukraina as the land located at the edge of the Polish kingdom. Thus, in the course of the 16th-18th centuries Ukraine became a concrete regional name among other historic regions such as Podolia, Severia, or Volhynia. It was used for the middle Dnieper territory controlled by the Cossacks. The people of Ukraina were called Ukrainians (українці, українники). Later, the term Ukraine was used for the Hetmanate lands on both sides of the Dnieper although it didn't become the official name of the state.
From the 18th century on, the term Ukraine becomes equally well known in the Russian Empire as the official and colonial term Little Russia. With the growth of national self-consciosness the significance of the term rose and it was perceived not only as a geographic but also as an ethnic name. In the 1830s, Nikolay Kostomarov and his Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Kiev started to use the name Ukrainians. 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. The evolution of the meaning became particularly obvious at the end of the 19th century. The term is also mentioned by the Russian scientist and traveler of Ukrainian origin Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay (1846-1888). At the turn of the 20th century the term Ukraine became independent and self-sufficient, pushing aside regional self-definitions In the course of the political struggle between the Little Russian and the Ukrainian identitites, it challenged the traditional term Little Russia ("Малороссия") and ultimately defeated it in the 1920s during the Bolshevik policy of Korenization and Ukrainization.
Mainstream interpretation as ‘borderland’
The traditional theory (which was widely supported by historians and linguists in the 19–20th centuries, see e.g. Max Vasmer's etymological 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 noun *krajь, meaning ‘edge, border’. Contemporary parallels for this are Russian okráina ‘outskirts’ and kraj ‘border district’.
This suggests that it was being used as 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 voivodeship of Kiev and later the region around Kiev. Later this name was adopted as the name of the country.
The etymology of the word Ukraine is seen this way among Russian, Ukrainian and Western historians such as Orest Subtelny, Paul Magocsi, Omeljan Pritsak, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Ivan Ohiyenko, Petro Tolochko and others. It's supported by the Encyclopedia of Ukraine and the Etymological dictionary of the Ukrainian language.
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, however, also a specialised map published in 1648 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), attesting to the fact that the term Ukraina was also in use.
Alternative interpretation as ‘region, country’
Some Ukrainian scholars, such as Hryhoriy Pivtorak, Fedir Shevchenko, Mykola Andrusyak, Serhiy Shelukhin believe that the name is derived from ukraina in the sense of ‘region, principality, country’. 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, Belarusian kraina and Russian and Polish kraj, all meaning ‘country’ (see Translations, 'region of land').
Pivtorak starts with the meaning of kraj as ‘land parcel, territory’, attested to in many Slavic languages and states of having acquired the meaning ‘a tribe's territory’ from early in Slavic morphology; *ukraj and *ukrajina would then mean "a separated land parcel, a separate part of a tribe's territory". Later, as Kievan Rus' disintegrated in the 12th century, its ukrainas would become independent principalities, hence the new (and earliest 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 Ukraina. Simultaneously, Pivtorak and other scholars claim that the words Okraina and Ukraine always had strictly separate meanings, which has been countered by other historical sources.
The same meaning, being ‘region, principality, country’, can additionally be understood to be derived from another meaning of the word *kraj-, namely ‘to cut’ — as in Church Slavonic кроити (kroiti), краяти (krajati) — that is, ‘the land someone carved out for themselves’.
"Ukraine" versus "the Ukraine"
Since the Ukrainian language does not use definite articles, "Ukraine" is the proper name in the Ukrainian language. However, in languages which possess definite articles, the question of whether the "official" name for Ukraine includes the definite article is subject to discussion. "Ukraine" and "The Ukraine" are both possible translations of the Ukrainian "Україна"- however, "Ukraine" is the more proper of the two.
Since the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, the English-speaking world has changed its usage from "the Ukraine" to "Ukraine". From November 1991, several American journalists began to use "Ukraine" instead of "the Ukraine". The Associated Press dropped the article "the" on 3 December 1991. This approach has become established in journalism and diplomacy since (other examples are the style guides of The Guardian and The Times). In 1993 the Ukrainian government requested that the article be dropped.
Referring to the country as "the Ukraine" instead of "Ukraine" is considered insulting and derogatory by many Ukrainians. It now implies disregard for the country's sovereignty, according to U.S. ambassador William Taylor. He noted that it continues in Russian usage (where the common form na Ukraine, "in the Ukraine", dates to the Soviet period), and has parallels in (particularly British) English, where forms such as "the Lebanon" were once usual for non-sovereign territories, as one would for instance refer to "the Rocky Mountains". During the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, "The Ukraine" was used to identify the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as a region of the Soviet Union- the same way that Americans label Central USA as "The Great Plains". Another theory about the origin of "The Ukraine" comes from Sir Bernard Pares, a Russian historian. His theory suggested that "the Ukraine" came from French usage. The French language uses definite articles in naming countries- Ia France, le Canada and l'Ukraine are a few examples. However, the definite article is lost in translation. English speakers do not use 'the Canada', 'the France', nor 'the Ukraine' in the English language.
In short, the use of the definite article "the" before a country name is only to be used in two cases. If the country (or other subnational feature) is plural, use an article. Likewise, if the main portion of the country's name is a noun with an independent meaning, use an article.
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 Constitution. Before independence in 1991, Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet Union known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Preposition usage in Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic languages
In the Ukrainian language both na Ukrajini (with the preposition na - "on") and v Ukrajini (with the preposition v - "in") have been used. Linguistic prescription in Russian dictates usage of na. Russian-language media in Ukraine are increasingly using the parallel form v Ukraine. The difference between the two prepositions is not clear and mostly relies on tradition. There are number of examples for use of both prepositions. The preposition na continues to be used with Ukraine (and with Rus') in other Slavic languages, including Polish, Czech, and Slovak. However, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene languages never use na Ukrajini, u/v Ukrajini being the proper form. T. Shevchenko wrote "na" :Як умру, то поховайте/ Мене на могилі,/ Серед степу широкого,/ На Вкраїні милій,/ Щоб лани широкополі,/ І Дніпро, і кручі/ Було видно, було чути,/ Як реве ревучий./ Як понесе з України/ У синєє море/
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:
In Ukrainian itself, there is a "euphony rule" sometimes used in poetry and music which changes the letter У (U) to В (V) at the beginning of a word when the preceding word ends with a vowel or a diphthong. When applied to the word Україна, this can produce the form Вкраїна (Vkrajina), as in song lyric Най Вкраїна вся радіє (Let all Ukraine rejoice!).