Matrushka; Hryvna

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 7/18/02 10:50:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Bapopik at AOL.COM
writes:

> MATRUSHKA--little eggs, finely decorated.  Sold at every tourist shop here.

> Tons of Google hits, but I didn't see it in the revised OED.  Is that
correct?

If I remember correctly, in Russian (but not necessarily in the Ukrainian of
Kiev), a "matrushka" has nothing to do with eggs per se but instead is a
nested set of painted dolls, which are egg-shaped so that each one (except
the largest) will nest within the next-larger one.

By the way, you mentioned your family came from "L'wiw".  Do you mean "Lwow"?
 Lwow is in the region known as "Galicia" (not to be confused with the
province of the same name in Spain) which during the 20th Century belonged to
Austria-Hungary then Poland then the Ukrainian SSR and finally to Ukraine (as
best as I can tell, the Gentiles in Galicia all spoke Polish.)

Which brings up the etymology of "Galicia".  The region in Spain was, I am
told, named after the Gauls (the people who lived in Omnis Gallia), which is
confusing because the Spanish trace their ancestry to the "Celtiberians", the
supposed merger of Celts with the pre-existing (proto-Basque?) Iberians.
Also, the region's name seems to be spelled "Galicia" but the local dialect
is "Gallego" (with palatalized "ll").

Is the Eastern European Galicia also named after the Gauls?  And if so how
did they get so far east, past the Goths into Slavic territory?

     - Jim Landau