etymology of Belarus

[Robert Orr]

A couple of further points on Tom Priestly's e-mail:


> 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?

The famous first line of hofudslausn in Egilssaga Skallagrimsonar
illustrates this point exactly:

"Vestr fork af ver"

although "vestr" actually refers to a voyage from Iceland to England,
because the
original compass was based in Norway.  This phenomenon has received a
complex development in Faroese, but I don't have the reference to hand.

>A similarly seductive, and probably deceptive, explanation, where
> perspective is all-important, involves "big" and "small". 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?


Actually, the use of :"great" (magna, velikaja, mikil, etc.) was often used
to refer to colonies.

cf. Magna Graecia (Italy, referrng to the numerous Greek colonies).

Apparently in Scandinavian sources Rus was on occasion referred to as "Great
Sweden" (I'm not sure of the original), and  America (Vinland (I think) even
as Irland it mikla! Velikaja Rus/Rossija may be seen in the same light.  In
Slavic studies this line of argumentation has also been pursued in
speculations on the location of "Velka Morava".

Robert Orr

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