Names of Ukraine

The name "Ukraine" (Ukrainian: Україна Ukrayina [ukrɑˈjinɑ]) derives from the Slavic words "u", meaning "within", and "kraj", meaning "end", "land" or "border". Together, "u+kraij" means "near the border" or more aptly in English, "the borderlands". 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, referring to numerous lands on the border between Polish and Kievan Rus' territories. In English, the traditional use was "the Ukraine", which is nowadays less common and officially deprecated by the Ukrainian government and many English language media publications.

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.

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