etymology of Belarus

[Tom Priestly]

I return from a week in Ljubljana to find myself quoted by my colleague
Andrij Hornjatkevyc as a source for the colours/compass points idea. He is
not wrong, but I would like to comment briefly. And would like to hear what
Ludomir Lozny finds out . . .

As Andrij quotes, the usual system was something like this:
        N - white, W - red, S - black, and E - green

and as Françoise Rosset reports,
        I found the idea fascinating anyway, so I sent it for comments to
        a few of my colleagues in other fields. Here's what our East Asian
        expert answered - same colors, but only one is the same compass point:

        >Francoise,Here is how the Chinese related colors to directions in
ancient
        >times:East,green;South,red;Center,yellow;West,white;North,black

Part of this anomaly may be explained by the idea of a different
perspective. Anyone who has played mah-jongg will know that the point of
the compass are apparently not viewed in the same way in China as in 'the
West' (more as if you are looking up, rather than down, at them, and then
transferring your viewpoint to paper, and then looking at it in the normal
way.) But that doesn't help very much, as far as I can tell, after some
mental gymnastics.

Which makes me think that the whole set of explanations is not just
fascinating, but very treacherous. For you have to know who first named a
compass-point, and where they were living at the time, and whether the name
was later borrowed and used by someone else living somewhere else. The
Black Sea was South for Rusians. The Red Sea was West for Arabians. But did
these names originate in, respectively, Rus' and Araby?

(And yes, the Black Sea was the 'wine-dark sea' for Homer (I believe), so
this, like so many names, probably has multiple probable origins. But my
point remains valid).

A similarly seductive, and probably deceptive, explanation, where
perspective is all-important, involves "big" and "small". I was told when
young (and a Brit) that "Great Britain" was so named by the French (Grande
Bretagne) because it was a great way away, as opposed to the closer
[Petite] Bretagne. The same explanation was put forward for a French
district of London which was named "Petty France", i.e., "small-way-away
France" from the Londoners' perspective.

This should, and presumably at some time has, tempted Slavists.  Was
Novgorod Velikiy further away than a smaller version of Novgorod, from the
perspective of someone important? Should Ukrainians be proud to have been
called "Little Russians" because this meant they were closer to the heart
of Rus', while the "Great Russians" were therefore peripheral?

Vesele Boz^ic^ne praznike vsem!

Tom Priestly







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*  Tom Priestly, Professor
*  Slavic & East European Studies
*  Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
*  University of Alberta
*  Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
---------------------------------------------------------------

*  telephone:  780 - 469 - 2920
*  fax:               780 - 492 - 9106

*  email:           tom.priestly at ualberta.ca
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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