Ruthenians - Etymology

Etymology

Originally, the term Rusyn was an ethnonym applied to the eastern Slavic-speaking ethnic group who inhabited the cultural and ethnic region of Rus' (Русь); often written through its Latin variant Ruthenia.

The names "Ruthenians" or "Ruthenes" were the Latin terms referring to Slavic people (those who spoke the Ruthenian language) living successively in the kingdom of Kievan Rus' and then the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With borders that varied greatly over time, they inhabited the area that is now Belarus, Ukraine, eastern portions of Slovakia and Poland, and Western Russia (area around Bryansk, Smolensk, Velizh and Vyazma).

After the area of White Ruthenia (Belarus) became part of the Russian Empire, the people of the area were often seen as a sub-group of Russians, and were often referred to as "White Russians" due to a confusion of the terms "Russia" and "Ruthenia."

Later "Ruthenians" or "Ruthenes" were used as a generic term for Greek Catholic, who inhabited Galicia and adjoining territories until the early twentieth-century; this group spoke Western dialects of the Ukrainian language and called themselves Русины, Rusyns (Carpatho-Russians).

The language these "Ruthenians" or "Ruthenes" spoke was also called the "Ruthenian language"; the name Ukrajins’ka mova ("Ukrainian language") became accepted by much of the Ukrainian literary class only in the early twentieth-century in Austro-Hungarian Galicia. After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 the term "Ukrainian" was usually applied to all Ukrainian-speaking inhabitants of Galicia.