The Change of the Name of the Russian Language in Russian from Rossiiskii to Russkii: Did Politics Have Anything to Do with It?
The Change of the Name of the Russian Language in Russian from Rossiiskii to Russkii: Did Politics Have Anything to Do with It?

Summary/Abstract: My initial field of research was the interdisciplinary study of ethnicity and nationalism, which attuned me to seemingly inconspicuous choices of names for such entities as nations, states, and languages. After scratching the surface, it often turns out that changes in the names of these entities are frequently dic¬tated by various politically motivated maneuvers and (national) groups’ needs, expressed on the political plane. While examples of this phenomenon abound in world history, a particularly clear instance is revealed by scrutinizing the emergence of the term “Ukraine” as the name of a polity and the expression “Ukrainian” derived from it for the polity’s nation and its national language.

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