LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XXXV (1995) LIETUVIŲ LEKSIKOLOGIJOS TYRINĖJIMAI

Simas KARALIŪNAS

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME LITHUANIA

1. Previous research and its evaluation

Scholars have been interested in the origin of the name Lithuania for quite some time. Inquiry into the name’s origin raises the question: what did this name mean initially, what was its original meaning? We have several hypotheses, but most of them are, as J. Gerulis put it, “bare conjectures” (blobe Vermutungen)¹. F. Kurschat had already noted that, at least in the Lithuanian language as it is today, there is no recognizable etymology for the name of our country (keine erkennbare Etymologie vorfindet)². And indeed, neither the modern language with its dialects nor the old written sources provide anything that we could regard as the etymon of the name Lietuvà—that true meaning which emerges when it is derived from another word or root. F. Kurschat even thought that the name had been given to us by our neighbors! But he found nothing in their languages either that could help explain the name of our country. Therefore, F. Kurschat conjectured, perhaps Lietuvà was instead derived from the participle liėtas. But even this, he maintained, could not be associated with a characteristic meaning, unless Lietuvà had denoted a p l a i n (eine Ebene)³.

The Hungarian linguist L. v. Patrubány supported deriving the name Lithuania from the root *lei-“to pour, flow, stream” (liēti, liētas, lytùs), but questioned whether Lietuvà denoted a plain⁴. In his view, the name Lietuvà had the same suffix -tu- as lytùs. Therefore, Lietuvà would correspond in general to Indo-European *lė(i)tu-u-ā or, more accurately, *lḗtu-u-ā “flooded, inundated area (Stromgebiet),” where the consonant u is supposedly a consonantal repetition of the vowel u. Latvian leitis was supposedly formed from the same root *lei- “to pour, flow, stream” and meant an inhabitant of a flooded area (Stromgebietanwohner).

A. Brückner, author of the “Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language,” also considered the name of our country to belong to the same root as the verb liēti, cautiously adding the question: perhaps from r a i n s⁵.

Later researchers⁶ also connect Lietuvà with the noun liētùs.

¹ G e r u l l i s G. Baltische Völker. — E b e r t M. Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, 1, Berlin, 1924, 339.

² K u r s c h a t F. Grammatik der Littauischen Sprache, Halle, 1876, 4.

³ K u r s c h a t F. Op. cit., 5.

⁴ P a t r u b á n y L.v. Lituanica. 2. Lietuvà ”Littauen”. — Indogermanische Forschungen 32, 1913, 327 (toliau — IF).

⁵ B r ü c k n e r A. Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, Kraków, 1927, 301.

⁶ S t a s z e w s k i J. Mały słownik. Pochodzenie i znaczenie nazw geograficznych,

55

Attempts have been made to explain the name Lithuania by comparing it with similar names in other lands. Thus W. Stokes was perhaps the first to compare the name Lietuvà with the Celtic name Letavia, also adducing Latin litūs ‘seashore, coast, seaside’ and thus determining the original meaning of the ancient Gallic form Litavia as ‘coastal land (Uferland, Küste)’⁷. W. Stokes and A. Bezzenberger considered these Lithuanian and Celtic names to have been related since ancient times, but A. Shakhmatov, on the basis of his hypothesis that Celts had once lived in the eastern Baltic, concluded that the names of Lithuania and Latvia derived from Celtic Letavia: ‘I think the Celts called the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea Litavia, whence the dialectal forms Letavia, Letau. When the Balts—the Lithuanians in the south and the Latvians in the north—occupied this coast, they named it after the land they had occupied’⁸. A. Shakhmatov also explained as borrowings various forms of the names Lithuania and Latvia in 13th-century historical sources: lat-, let- (Lėtbbola, Lettī), liet-, lit- (Letthooia, Litthooia, Lithaoia, Littevini).

Having critically examined A. Shakhmatov’s hypothesis and its supporting arguments, K. Būga⁹, M. Vasmer¹⁰, and J. Endzelīns¹¹ established that there is no evidence that Celts lived in the eastern Baltic. On the origin of the name Lithuania, M. Vasmer wrote: ‘... Lithuanian Lietuvà and Old Russian Litva cannot, for phonetic reasons, be considered borrowings from Celtic Litavia “coastal land.” Thus, nothing remains for us but to consider these two words cognate from ancient times (urverwandt)¹².’ As M. Vasmer noted, the differing phonetic structure of these names makes it quite clear that Lietuvà cannot be a Celtic relic. If it were a borrowing, we would expect a much closer correspondence of sounds. The suffixes do not match in the first place: the Lithuanian word has the suffix -uva, while the Celtic form has -av-. If we take into account the variant form Lietavà, which M. Vasmer does not mention, let us assume that the difference between the suffixes is not essential. Even so, the root vocalism remains irreconcilable.

The root of Lietuvà formerly appeared as *Leit-. One possible explanation of Gaulish Litavia is that this name belongs to the root *lei-/*li- ‘to flow’, which is also found in Lithuanian lįeti¹³, and that Gaulish Litavia has a variant of this root with zero-grade ablaut, namely *li-t-. If Lietuvà, Lietavà were a Celtic relic, we would now have *Litavà.

Warsaw, 1968, 250.

⁷ Stokes W. Urkeltischer Sprachschatz. Übersetzt, überarbeitet und herausgegeben von A. Bezzenberger, Göttingen, 1894, 248—249 (= Fick A. Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen 4 Aufl., 2. Teil, Wortschatz der Keltischen Spracheinheit von W. Stokes und A. Bezzenberger, Göttingen, 1894).

⁸ Schachmatov A. Zu den ältesten slavisch-keltischen Beziehungen. — Archiv für Slavische Philologie 33, 1912, 82.

⁹ Buga K. Kann man Keltenspuren auf baltischem Gebiet nachweisen? — Rocznik slawistyczny 6, Kraków, 1913, 1—38 (= Būga K. Rinktiniai raštai 1, Vilnius, 1958, 496—530 (toliau — Būga K. RR)).

¹⁰ Vasmer M. Kritisches und Antikritisches zur neueren slavischen Etymologie. — Rocznik slawistyczny 6, 1913, 172—213. Plg. Фасмер М. Этимологический словарь русского языка 2, Москва, 1986, 2, 502 (toliau — ЭСРЯ).

¹¹ Endzelins J. Darbu izlase 2, Rīga, 1974, 371—374.

¹² Vasmer M. Op. cit., 204—205.

¹³ Stokes W. Op. cit., 248.

56

As noted, M. Vasmer considered it possible that the names Lietuva and Gaulish Litavia have been related since ancient times¹⁴. These names are linked to one root (*lei- “to flow”), though with some reservations regarding Litavia; this is also the position taken in the “Latin Etymological Dictionary,” beginning with its first edition in 1906¹⁵. The comparison of these names has not been abandoned even today. For example, W. Merlingen, drawing on modern methodological principles of comparative linguistics and focusing on the internal—primarily semantic—aspect of the phenomena being compared, lists among the words derived from the reconstructed Indo-European root *leit- “lowland, shore,” besides Latin lītus “shore, seacoast,” also Gaulish Letavia and Lietuvà, Latvian Lietavà^¹⁶. Thus the Lithuanian and Celtic names continue to be regarded as sharing a root. This hypothesis therefore needs to be examined more thoroughly.

By the Latinized name Letavia (ancient Gaulish Litavia), found in the medieval text “Vita sancti Mevenni,” the Celts of the British Isles referred to the opposite continental coast. Another name for it was Aremorica (from the Celtic prefix are-, Irish air-, Gaulish ar- “before” and Celtic more, corresponding to Lithuanian dialectal mãrė). In Caesar’s writings and on Roman coins appears the personal name Litavicos, Litavicus, Litaviccus, formed from Litavia with the suffix -ic- and meaning “newcomer from Aremorica.” The name Letha is also known from medieval Irish written sources, where it denotes not only northern France but, mistakenly, Latium as well. The gloss Latio is also explained by the ancient Welsh (Cymric) Litau, corresponding to modern Welsh Llydaw^¹⁷.

Assuming that these Celtic names have the root *Li-t- with zero grade in the ablaut, W. Stokes, A. Bezzenberger, and A. Walde compare them with Latin lītus “shore of the sea, ocean shore, coast; seashore” and assign them to the Indo-European root *lei- “to flow, pour.” Celtic scholars, however, view this interpretation skeptically. For example, G. Dottin writes: “The explanation of the name Rīga by Celtic Rigo-, and the comparison of the name Lithuania with Letavia—the Celtic name for Aremorica—are highly doubtful (sont très douteuses)”¹⁸. This view is entirely justified. This would be one explanation for the origin of the Celtic place-names cited. Nevertheless, the sound correspondences in Celtic languages also allow another, apparently much more credible, possibility for the origin of the names under consideration. Indo-European syllabic sonants l̥ and r̥ in Celtic langu-

¹⁴ But in the “Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language,” M. Vasmer already considers the connection between Lietuva and Irish Letha “Aremorica, Latium” doubtful; see Фасмер М. ЭСРЯ 2, 502.

¹⁵ Walde A. Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 3. neubearbeitete Auflage von J. B. Hofmann 1, Heidelberg, 1938, 815.

¹⁶ Merlingen W. Über eine Bedeutungsverzweigung im indogermanischen Lexikon. — IF 83, 1978, 61—62.

¹⁷ Stokes W. Urkeltischer Sprachschatz, 248—249; Dottin G. La langue gauloise. Grammaire, textes et glossaire, Paris, 1920, 64, 109, 266—267.

¹⁸ Dottin G. Op. cit., 128. — The name of Riga, Latvian Rīga, cannot be derived either from Celtic Rigo- or from Old Scandinavian rīga “unevenness, depression,” as K. Karulis has recently sought to prove (see Karulis K. Daugavas un Piedaugavas vietvārdi. — Daugavas raksti. No Aizkraukles līdz Rīgai, Rīgā, 1991, 148—156), does not permit the Lithuanian Samogitian Ringà, the old Baltic form of Riga’s name. There is no evidence showing that Samogitian Ringà is a reworking of the supposed original form *Rīgā. See Buga K. Kann man Keltenspuren auf baltischem Gebiet nachweisen?, 18 (= Būga K. RR 1, 511). Cf. Būga K. RR 3, 515.

57

before the stops have become li and ri, while Proto-Indo-European p at the beginning of the word has disappeared without a trace. Therefore, the Proto-Indo-European root *plt- had long since been reconstructed for those Celtic place names, and they were compared with Sanskrit pr̥thivī fem. ‘earth’. This was prompted by the formal identity of Sanskrit pr̥thivī and the Gaulish tribal name (Gentilname), originally an epithet of the god Mars, Lītavis¹⁹. The reconstructed proto-form of both words is *pl̥tH-u-í(H)-, a derivative of the Proto-Indo-European adjective *pl̥tH-ú- (Sanskrit pr̥thú- ‘broad, spacious, large’, Greek πλατύς ‘broad, flat, level’)²⁰. The original meaning of Latin-Gaulish Letavia, Middle Irish Letha, and Old Welsh Litau, Welsh Llydaw is considered to be ‘broad, flat land, mainland, continent (breites Land, Festland)’²¹.

In view of the points noted above, later works on Indo-European and Baltic studies no longer discuss Latin-Gaulish Letavia²²; instead, they are content to compare Lietuvà with Latin lītus, gen. sing. lītoris ‘shore of the sea, ocean; coast, seaside’ (< *leitos-) and to assign both to the Proto-Indo-European root *lei-lēi- ‘pour, spill; flow, run’, to which the Lithuanian words lieti (lieja, lēja) ‘pour’, lýti (lýja) ‘rain’, lietūs ‘rain’, and lytùs ‘rainy’ also belong²³. The original meaning of the name Lithuania is explained as ‘a flooded area, territory (Stromgebiet)’²⁴.

In recent years, a similar equivalent or derivational parallel to the place name Lietuvà has also been identified in Slavic languages. These are Russian dialectal литва ‘heavy rain, foul weather, downpour’ and Serbo-Croatian lȉtva ‘flooding; heavy rain lasting several days’ < Slavic *litva, considered an old formation with the suffix -tva from the verb *liti ‘pour’²⁵.

On this point, it should be added that under this hypothesis Latin lītus is not the etymon of the name Lithuania, but merely a word sharing the same root—its suffix is -os-.

Thurneysen R. Ind. pr̥thivī. — IF 4, 1894, 84—85; Pedersen H. Comparative Grammar of the Celtic Languages 1, Göttingen, 1909, 60; Dottin G. La langue gauloise, 266; Walde A., Hofmann J. B. Latin Etymological Dictionary 2, Heidelberg, 1954, 316; Льюис С. И. Недпецен X. Краткая сравнительная грамматика кельтских языков, Москва, 1954, 37.¹⁹

²⁰ Mayrhofer M. Kurzgefaßtes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altnindischen 2, Heidelberg, 1963, 334.

²¹ Thurneysen R. Op. cit., 85.

²² This explanation of the origin of the name Lithuania is revisited in the “History of Europe” published in Italy, although it is noted that this is not a universally accepted etymology: the name Lithuania is compared here with Welsh Llydaw and the Greek city name Platea; it is suggested that, owing to the characteristic Celtic phonetic feature (the loss of *p), the name would recall the Celts who lived in Lithuania (rimanderebbe a un insediamento celtico in Lituania), — Bader F. Il problema indoeuropeo: lingue locali e non locali in Europa tra il 600 a.C. a il 500 d.C. — Storia d’Europa, II. Preistoria e antichità, Torino, 1994, 1014.

²³ Pokorny J. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern und München, 1959, 664—665 („galbūt čia ir Lietuva”); Fraenkel E. Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 1, Heidelberg-Göttingen, 1962, 368—369 („Etimologiškai Lietuvà greičiausiai sietina su lot. lītus...”); Фасмер М. ЭСРЯ 2, 502.

²⁴ Fraenkel E. Op. cit., 369.

²⁵ Трубачев О. Н. Этимологический словарь славянских языков 15, Москва, 1988, 159 (toliau — ЭССЯ).

58

and the name of Lithuania — -uva²⁶.

There was another Litovia. In the time of the Avars, in the 4th century AD, and later, this was the name given to the region by the River Leita, which flows through Austria and Hungary into the Danube²⁷.

In J. Kabelka’s words, “Recently, the most reliable hypothesis has been considered to be that the name Lithuania is of hydronymic origin”²⁸. S. Tarvydas was perhaps the first to express this idea in print. In his booklet “Place Names of Lithuania,” he wrote: “Lithuania may have originated from the river name Leite. The name Lithuania may have derived from the name of the River Leite in the following way: Leit(e) + uva > Leituva > Lietuva”²⁹. The explanation of the origin of the name Lithuania is presented here in the indirect mood—as if reporting someone else’s opinion. Lithuanian linguists at Kaunas’s Vytautas Magnus University began publishing this explanation of the origin of the name Lithuania, and S. Tarvydas, who attended their lectures, set it out in his booklet. A. Salys and P. Jonikas held the same view on this matter.

P. Jonikas considers Lietuva to have been formed from the root liet- < leit- with the suffix -uva; he compares the diphthong ei with Latvian leitis “Lithuanian.” P. Jonikas goes on to suggest that, just as the names of the Latvians and Latvia, and of the Yotvingians, may have been associated with a river name, so too may leit- initially have been connected with a river name; cf. Leitą “a tributary of the Grūmenė,” Leité “a tributary of the Rusnė” (according to others, Léita, whose accent would correspond to that of Lietuva, where the root is L iet- < *l eit-). P. Jonikas cautiously asks whether this root might be etymologically distinct from the root of lieti “to pour”³⁰. A. Salys considers Lietuva a derivative with a suffix from the original *L éita > *L ieta, probably meaning the region along the banks of the Lietà. Latvian leitis “Lithuanian,” an old possessive adjective, was formed from *L éita (> *L ieta). A. Salys also compares *L éita > *L ieta with the river names Léita or Leité (with the tributary Leitále), Leitą or Leitỹs, and Lėitupalis³¹. The suffix -uva is used in the formation of place names to denote a place³².

S. Tarvydas also raised the question of the region in which the name Lithuania might have originated, and drew attention to an important circumstance. As is known, the Polish historian H. Lowmiański established that as early as the 13th century Lithuania was called one of the “lands” (terra, Land), located between the Neris, Nemunas, and Merkys³³. S. Tarvydas wrote: “In this territory, it seems, there is no small river called Leitė, but in ancient times this was the name given to

²⁶ Therefore, the place name Lietuva cannot be explained as “coastal region,” nor can the hypothesis itself be rejected on the grounds that, supposedly, Lithuania is not and never was a maritime region—B r u c k n e r A. Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, 301; O t r ę b s k i J. Gramatyka języka litewskiego 1, Warszawa, 1958, 3; Ž i n k e v i č i u s Z. Lietuvių kalbos istorija 2, Vilnius, 1987, 12.

²⁷ O c h m a ń s k i J. Historia Litwy, wydanie drugie, Wrocław, Warszawa..., 1982, 13.

²⁸ K a b e l k a J. Baltų filologijos įvadas, Vilnius, 1982, 110.

²⁹ T a r v y d a s St. Lietuvos vietovardžiai, Vilnius, 1958, 21.

³⁰ J o n i k a s P. History of the Lithuanian Language. — Lithuanian Encyclopedia 15, Lithuania, Boston, 1968, 543.

³¹ S a l y s A. The Origin of the Name Lithuania.—S a l y s A. Writings 2, Proper Names, Rome, 1983, 695—696.

³² T a r v y d a s St. Op. cit., 21.

³³ L o w m i a ń s k i H. Studja nad początkami społeczeństwa i państwa litewskiego 2, Wilno, 1932, 110—111, 118—121.

59

a stream could have been there, and people could have forgotten its name”³⁴

At the same time as S. Tarvydas’s booklet, articles by the Polish Lithuanianist J. Otrębski on the problem of the origin of the name Lithuania also appeared. Taken as a whole, J. Otrębski’s explanation of the origin of our country’s name is close to that of Lithuanian linguists, but differs in certain respects. First of all, J. Otrębski—like A. Salys—believes that alongside Lietuvà there was also a shorter variant *Lietā with a stem ending in -ā.

But Lietuvà—like the Latvian name Latuva < *Latūs—is, according to J. Otrębski, an ancient u-stem form *Lietū-s, which initially referred to the area by the river *Leitā, as well as to the people living there. In time, the formal river name and the place-name derived from it were no longer properly understood, J. Otrębski goes on to say—especially by foreigners; therefore, the name for a Lithuanian could also be formed from the river name *Leitā, *Lietā (hence Latv. leitis), not only from the name of the territory *Lietūs.

What, then, is this river name *Leitā, *Lietā? J. Otrębski says it is not impossible that this was the old name of the Nemunas. Even today, the Nemunas bears the only name of this river—the branch in its lower reaches is called Rùsnė. Therefore, J. Otrębski believes that the name of the very ancient town by the Nemunas, Alytùs, is precisely connected with the old name of this river, *Alyta, preserved in its Slavic name Olita, but used to designate the town. J. Otrębski considers the river names Lėita (=Leitā) in the Klaipėda district and Lytis in the Tauragė district etymologically related to the conjectured Nemunas name *Leitā. The derivation of the name *Leitā presents no difficulty: with the suffix -tā it is derived from the root of the verb lė́ti.

The old name of the Nemunas, according to J. Otrębski, *Alyta = rus. Олума, may be a Russian transposition of Lithuanian *Alyta. The initial O- in the form О-лума may have arisen through the incorrect segmentation of combinations such as *ko-Litē, *vo-Litē, *do-Lity. The resulting form Олума became widespread among Lithuanians, who derived from it the town’s name Alytùs³⁵.

J. Otrębski’s view of the origin of the name Lithuania changed, but not because he had noticed that this hypothesis contains entirely unfounded, even fantastic, claims. In a later article, J. Otrębski derived Lietuvà from *Leitā with the suffix -(t)uvā. The original meaning of this reconstructed word was “flow, stream; river (Fliessen, Fluss)” (: lieti). The word *Leitā was said to denote not only rivers but, in some places, settlements situated beside them as well. This is how the emergence of Latv. leitis “Lithuanian” is explained—as deriving with -io- from *Leitā. The rivers called by this word are Lėita, a tributary of the Rusnė, in the Lithuanized German form Leite, Lėciškių ežeras Lake in the Marijampolė district, Gudeliai (et, rather than the expected že, indicating that this is a name of Yotvingian origin) and Lietáuka, a tributary of the Neris near Upninkai. Because of its accent and the suffix -ka, the formation of the name Lietáuka is more Slavic than Baltic (Lithuanian). But Lietáuka conceals *Lietava, which is said to be a variant of Lietuvà “Litauen,” differing only in the suffix -(t)avā. Neighboring-

³⁴ T a r v y d a s St. Op. cit., 22.

³⁵ O t r ę b s k i J. Gramatyka języka litewskiego 1, 3—5; t o p a t i e s, Lietuvà. — Beiträge zur Namenforschung 9, 1958, 116—118.

60

the existence of the Lithuanian name form *Lietava is supposedly certain—this is said to be indicated by Latvian Lietav-niek³⁶.

Having found even a conjectural related form of the Lithuanian name—unfortunately, the article’s author was unaware of the fact that Lietava “Lietuva” actually exists—J. Otrębski could no longer derive Lietuvą from the ū-stem form *Lietū-s, gen. *Lietuv-es. Moreover, “there are no traces in Lithuanian of the proto-form *Lietūs reconstructed by Otrębski”³⁷. There is also no evidence that in ancient times the Nemunas was called *Leitā. “His Alytus theory has no basis whatsoever”³⁸. That J. Otrębski wrongly divides the place name Alytùs (acc. Alýtų) into morphemes was demonstrated by K. Kuzavinis³⁹. Alýtùs originally had the form Alyta, and this was the name of a river: Oauma 1387, Oaumi⁴⁰, Olita and Olite 1503⁴¹. Later, to distinguish it from the river name, a town name with a u-stem was formed from it (cf., for example, Vilnia: Vilnius), while the river name itself was changed to Alūt-upis, following the highly productive formation pattern with -upis. Thus Alyta actually has the suffix -yta—for this, cf., for example, Apytà in Dieveniškės, a tributary of the Gauja: Old Prussian ape “river”; Mikytà in Adutiškis, a tributary of the Svyla: the root mik- in words such as Latvian miklãjs “marsh, bog,” mìklene “ditto,” mìkls “sticky, boggy,” “flexible,” Lithuanian mìklas, mìklūs “pliant, flexible...” < mik-l- (cf. Latvian mìkāt “... to press, squeeze, knead”). The root Al- is the same as in Alỹs lake in Širvintos, Al-ejà in Subačius, a tributary of the Viešinta; lake in Subačius, Al-ėja in Joniškis, a tributary of the Virčiuvis; in Raseiniai, a tributary of the Upė, etc.⁴². This is the root of the verb alėti (ãli) “to flow, drip.” The surname Alytà. is derived from the same verb, but with its other meaning, namely “to run, fly,” using the same suffix.

Interestingly, the stem *Al-it- is attested in Latvian names; cf. Altēni “isolated farmstead” in Sauka, perhaps Alīši “ditto” in Odziena⁴³, if from *Alīt̄ai.

From what has been said, it is clear that one cannot seek the ancient name of the Nemunas in the name Alytus. This was precisely what J. Otrębski very much needed: a tribe or group of tribes living along the middle and upper reaches of Lithuania’s largest river could naturally have taken its name from that river, as the typology of ethnonym formation confirms. Discussing J. Otrębski’s 1958 hypothesis—that is, the one proposed before the river name Lietáuka was known—historian J. Ochmański drew attention to the following fact⁴⁴: in a document of 1255 (suspected to be an Order forgery)

³⁶ O t r ę b s k i J. Balt. *lēitā. — Baltistica 3(2), 1967, 201—203.

³⁷ S a l y s A. Op. cit., 696.

³⁸ S a l y s A. ibid.

³⁹ K u z a v i n i s K. Lietuvos vardo kilmė. — Kalbotyra 10, 1964, 6.

⁴⁰ B ū g a K. RR 3, 401.

⁴¹ S a v u k y n a s B. Ežerų vardai. — Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 3, 1960, 294(toliau — LKK).

⁴² S a v u k y n a s B. ibid.; K u z a v i n i s K. Op. cit., 6—7; t o p a-t i e s, Etymologica. II. Etimologinės pastabos dėl baltų el-/al- ”tekėti”. — Baltistica 1(2), 1966, 180—181.

⁴³ E n d z e l ī n s J. Latvijas PSR vietvārdi 1(1), Rīgā, 1956, 20.

⁴⁴ O c h m a ń s k i J. Noms des terres lituaniennes au XIIIᵉ siècle — Lituanie,

61

Mindaugas donated Sėlia to the Order of the Sword, carefully specifying the boundary inter Zelones et Litvinos (Littovinos). But what is most important for linguistics and history in this document is that it mentions a river on the Lithuanian side Lettovia: the boundary runs in ripam Lettoviae que dicitur de Lettavie (Lettovie). Since the document’s author was well informed and correctly names several Lithuanian river names⁴⁵, it was not difficult for J. Ochmański to identify Lettovia (Lettavia) as Latava, a right-bank tributary of the Šventoji near Andrioniškis (a variant form Latavą⁴⁶ also exists). The river name Lettovia exactly matches the Latin form of Lithuania’s name in Mindaugas’s documents, Lettovia, Lethovia, for example, in 1253 in Lettovia in cura nostra. J. Ochmański writes further: “If linguistic analysis could establish that the river name Latava also occurred in a form corresponding to the Latin Lettovia, Otrębski’s argument about the origin of the name Lithuania might be correct. Of course, the small river Latava-Lettovia could not have given its name to the whole land of Lithuania, if only because it did not flow through the territory of ancient Lithuania; nevertheless, it could support the thesis that the form Lietuva was formed from this river’s name”⁴⁷. J. Ochmański’s methodological observations should not be forgotten when deriving the name Lithuania from a river name, despite the fact that he, too, failed to explain satisfactorily where the name of the Lithuanian land and state came from. The contemporary language’s name for the country, Lietuva, whose root Liet- may also be reflected in the aforementioned Latin forms of Lithuania’s name, as K. Kuzavinis correctly pointed out⁴⁸, can be neither compared with nor derived from the river name Latavą. For the river name Lettovia (Lettavia) in the aforementioned document shows only that in the mid-13th century Latavą (Latavą) was still pronounced Letava (Letuva) with e, apparently after a velarized l⁴⁹. By contrast, the root of Lietuvā was formerly pronounced *Leit-. Thus, they cannot be identified with one another, if only for phonetic reasons.

In “The History of Lithuania,” J. Ochmański claims that one of the rivers in the territory of the Lithuanian land was once indeed called Leita. In “The Lithuanian Metrica,” a 1542 court record mentions a meadow disputed for haymaking, “by the river Leytie,” in Trakai County. Since the Samė (Onuškis, a left-bank tributary of the Verknė) flowed near that meadow, J. Ochmański draws the unexpected conclusion that the vanished Leyta (=Leita) had been the old name of the Verknė⁵⁰.

In the important volume “Indo-European Languages,” published in Poland in 1988, the origin of the name Lithuania is described as follows: “Lietuvà < Balt. *Leit-uvā collective, from the river name *Leitā (cf. Léita and Latvian leitìs)⁵¹.”

Nalszczany et Dziawoltwa. — Lingua Posnaniensis 9, 1963, 170—171.

⁴⁵ This document and its translation are provided by K. Būga; see Būga K. RR 2, 109—110.

⁴⁶ In fact, this had already been done by K. Būga; see Būga K. RR 1, 132 (n. 2); 2, 110; 3, 530.

⁴⁷ Ochmański J. Op. cit., 171.

⁴⁸ Kuzavinis K. The origin of the name Lithuania, 8.

⁴⁹ The Latava, a tributary of the Šventoji, seems to have derived from *Letuva: ripa Lettowiae,” — Būga K. RR 3, 530.

⁵⁰ Ochmański J. Historia Litwy, second edition, 12—13.

⁵¹ Smoczyński W. Baltic languages. — Indo-European Languages, ed.

62

Of all the hypotheses deriving Lithuania’s name from a hydronym, the most reliable is the one that takes into account the methodological observation mentioned above: a tribe or group of tribes could have taken its name from a river if it lived beside a river named *Lietuva, or if a river of that name flowed through the territory it inhabited. K. Kuzavinis’s hypothesis therefore aroused considerable interest, while also confirming S. Tarvydas’s conjecture that a stream with such a name may have existed in the land of ancient Lithuania. K. Kuzavinis’s hypothesis can be briefly stated in his own words: ”... the regional name Lietuva [more correctly, Lietavà — S.K.] is an old Lithuanian word derived from the hydronym Lietava. The name Lietava was first given to a river (a tributary of the Neris); later the same name came to designate the territory beside that river (Lietava Land), where famous centres eventually arose: Kernavė, Trakai, Vilnius”⁵². That river is ”That is Letáuka, a right-bank tributary of the Neris, rising in the L i e t a u-k a marsh, flowing past the villages of Keižoniai, Karveliškės, Perelozai, and Vyšnialaukis, and joining the Neris near Arnotiškiai”⁵³.

There is nothing to fault in the form Lietavà reconstructed for the river’s name by K. Kuzavinis himself and, somewhat later, by J. Otrębski. First, as K. Kuzavinis correctly points out, the dialectal variants of the name Le- should be transposed into the standard language as Lie- in accordance with the sound laws of the local dialect (the old le- here is, after all, rendered as la-). Second, by analogy with Linkavà: Linkáuka, Samavà: Samáuka, one can quite reasonably discern an older form, Lietavà, in the name Lietáuka, both for the marsh and for the river—the Slavic suffix -ka may have been added later (as often happens in other cases).

In K. Kuzavinis’s view, the hydronym Lietavà either derives from the physiographic term *lietava, “the overflowing (river),” itself formed from the verb lieti and cognate with Latin litus⁵⁴; or the river name Lietavà is a compound formed from the past active participle *lieta of the verb lieti and the noun *ava, which in ancient times meant “river, spring.” The word combination *lieta ava merged into the compound *lietava, in which ava came to be understood as a suffixoid and, in modern times, as the suffix -ava⁵⁵.

V. Mažiulis’s view on the origin of Lietuvà is somewhat different, although he too derives Lietuvà from a river name and connects it with lieti. From the root lié- < *lẽi- of this verb, with the suffix -tu-, used to form abstract deverbal nouns, the form *léi-tu- “pouring (itself)” was derived. It may be noted here that such a suffix certainly existed in the Baltic languages. It has been preserved, for example, in Lithuanian supines (eitų, nėštų), which developed from the accusative singular forms of fossilized verbal abstracts in the tu stem (*ei-tu-n, *nẽs-tu-n). The suffix -tu-, which was neuter and whose u was not apophonic, acquired an epenthetic v: *-tu- (neutrum) > *-tu-o(n) (neutrum) > Lithuanian -tuv-as (e.g., atùtùvas) before endings or a vowel of another suffix. The appearance or absence of the epenthetic v was conditioned by the following circumstances: 1) the syntagma -K+v- (K denotes any consonant or consonant cluster), 2) u

redakcją L. Bednarczuka 2, Warszawa, 1988, 821.

⁵² Kuzavinis K. The Origin of the Name Lithuania, 10.

⁵³ Kuzavinis K. Op. cit., 8.

⁵⁴ Kuzavinis K. Op. cit., 14—15.

⁵⁵ Kuzavinis K. Lithuanian River Names lie-(lei-). — Kalbotyra 17, 1967, 136.

63

the influence of the stem (e.g., nom. plur. *sūnu-es > *sūnves: sūnùs) and 3) morphological generalization of -Kuv- + vowel⁵⁶. It is quite complex and not entirely clear.

According to V. Mažiulis, derived forms were more numerous than root forms in all types of nominal stems; therefore, the latter, and thus -tu- with non-ablauting u, were incorporated into the type with ablauting u, that is, into the u-stem type with stem-final vowel alternation -eu-/-ou- (cf. the adjective OCS synovъ: synъ, OCS vdova: Prussian widdewū “widow”). In this way, in V. Mažiulis’s view, the doublet forms with -t-uv- and -t-av- developed, as, for example, Latvian liētuva-ains laiks “rainy weather” alongside liētavas “(lasting several days) rainy weather”; consequently, likewise Lietuvà alongside Lietavà⁵⁷.

According to this conception, Lietuvà underwent the following derivational and morphological development: liē-ti < *lēi- → *lēi-tu- “pouring” → hydronym *Lietva/*Lietuva/*Lietava → region name *Lietva/Lietuvà/Lietavà. The form Lietuvà (= Old Russian Лумъва) reflects a later stage of development and evolved in the manner described from the original form *Lietva (Lei-tu-ā “pouring; area by a river”)⁵⁸.

Although deriving the name of our land and state from the name of a river—albeit a small one, only 11 km long—Lietava, several circumstances must nevertheless be borne in mind.

1. The hydronym *Lietava is reconstructed. The form actually attested is Lietáuka (Letáuka). In fact, this may contain the suffix -auka, of which there are several derivatives in Lithuanian nomenclature; cf. Babr- áuka, Rud-áuka, Bar-auka⁵⁹. In other words, the hydronym *Lietava may not exist here at all.

2. In A. Salys’s words, “This hydronym would be important for determining the development of the name Lithuania if it could be traced back to the sixteenth century”⁶⁰.

3. The original Lietuvà/Lietavà—a certain administrative-territorial unit called a land—lay between the Neris, Nemunas, and Merkys. It is more likely that a tribe or group of tribes living in this area would have named themselves after one of these larger rivers. Let us suppose that, as the proponents of the hypothesis in question claim, our state and land really did get their name from the name of the Lietauka stream, *Lietava. There must then have been particular reasons why this happened. The task is to identify those reasons. Without finding the underlying reasons, we lack firm knowledge—and hence an adequate, internally consistent hypothesis.

It is true that a general developmental tendency in Baltic (and, correspondingly, Indo-European) ethnonymic and toponymic nomenclature is cited: hydronym → region name → ethnonym⁶¹. From a typological point of view, there is nothing to object to in this: there are cases in which tribes or their confederations take their names from the rivers, lakes, and lagoons (seas) beside which they live. The greatest temptation to connect the name Lithuania with some hydronym is, quite understandably, prompted by the claim—now almost an axiom—that the hydronym Lat(u)va (and Lata(u)à), a right-bank tributary of the Šventoji near Anykščiai, gave the Lat(v)ians their name.

⁵⁶ Mazhiulis V. On the Baltic and Indo-European dative singular. — Baltistica 3, 1967, 39, note 102.

⁵⁷ Mazhiulis V. Op. cit., 39—40.

⁵⁸ Mazhiulis V. Op. cit., 41, note 107.

⁵⁹ Vanagas A. Lietuvos TRS hidronimų daryba, Vilnius, 1970, 98—99.

⁶⁰ Salys A. The origin of the name Lithuania, 696.

⁶¹ Kuzavinis K. The origin of the name Lithuania, 8.

64

In addressing the problem of the origin of the name Lithuania, one must also bear in mind a wholly opposite tendency in the development of ethnonymy and toponymy, namely: regional-territorial unions, the so-called “lands,” in other words, regional-territorial groups of inhabitants, formed from tribal groups and in many cases inherited their names; in other words, tribal names, ethnonyms, become the names of “lands,” toponyms. For example, one of the many East Slavic—Rusin—tribes was деревляне (an ethnonym). But the “Повесть временных лет” later mentions деревлянин, i.e., an inhabitant of the region of Дерева, the land of Derevo (Деревская земля) (a toponym)⁶².

Historians suspect that the L i t h u a n i a n l a n d is a remnant of a tribe that had a special tribal name (Lietuva/Lietava) and organized itself into a regional-territorial union after the Samogitians and the “lands” of the Aukštaitians had separated⁶³.

River names with the root Leit- are known: Leità (acc. sing. Leĩtą), a tributary of the Svėksna, itself a tributary of the Graumena. A variant form of this name is Leitupalis⁶⁴, and K. Kuzavinis has also found Leitỹs (gen. sing. Leĩčio⁶⁵). In addition, there is Leitė, in the Šilutė district, a right-bank tributary of the Rusnė (Nemunas), with its own right-bank tributary Leitàlė⁶⁶.

Village names derived from the river name Leitė are: Leitgiriai (acc. plur. Leitgir(i)us), Šilutė district, Juknaičiai⁶⁷; Leitvariai (acc. plur. Leitvarius) (in the same area)⁶⁸; Ántleičiai, Šilutė district, Usėnai; Pãleičiai, Šilutė district, Juknaičiai⁶⁷.

The accentuation of the root in the names of the bog and streams Lietáuka/ Letáuka is unknown—for the root is unstressed. If the stress position and accent in the variant form Liẽtauka are correctly indicated in “The Gazetteer of Rivers and Lakes of the Lithuanian SSR” (p. 92), then the root accent in the river names Lietáuka/Letáuka and in the reconstructed form *Lietava is likewise circumflex.

The river names Leità (Leitỹs, Leitupalis), Leitė, Leitálė and Lietáuka/Letáuka are, first, considered related to one another and, second, distinguished from the root of the verb lė́ti (-ja, lė́ja, -jo, lė́jo)⁶⁹. But the differing accents of their roots, associated with different root structures, are not explained. The root of the Balto-Slavic verb meaning ‘to pour, to flow’, *lēi-t(e)i, was laryngeal (*leh₃-i-)⁷⁰, or, to use the traditional term of Indian grammarians, a set- root. Meanwhile, these river names

⁶² Никонов В. Н. Этнонимы. — Этнонимы, Москва, 1970, 8—9.

⁶³ L o w m i a ń s k i H. Studies on the origins of Lithuanian society and state 2, 153—154.

⁶⁴ Gazetteer of Rivers and Lakes of the Lithuanian SSR, Vilnius, 1963, 89.

⁶⁵ K u z a v i n i s K. Lithuanian river names lie- (lei-), 135.

⁶⁶ Gazetteer of Rivers and Lakes of the Lithuanian SSR, 89—on the formation of Leitupalis and Leitalė, see V a n a g a s A. Op. cit., 86, 89.

⁶⁷ Directory of the Administrative-Territorial Division of the Lithuanian SSR 2, Vilnius, 1976, 12, 157, 220.

⁶⁸ K u z a v i n i s K. Lithuanian river names lie- (lei-), 135.

⁶⁹ K u z a v i n i s K. The origin of the name Lithuania, 14—16; the same author, Lithuanian river names lie- (lei-), 135—137; O t r ę b s k i J. Balto-Slavic *lēitā, 201; V a n a g a s A. Etymological Dictionary of Lithuanian Hydronyms, Vilnius, 1981, 185, 190; Z i n k e v i č i u s Z. History of the Lithuanian Language 2, 12—13, 15—16.

⁷⁰ K a r a l i ū n a s S. The Proto-Indo-European root *leh₃u- ‘to pour, flow...’ in the Baltic languages (Lith. liūtis ir lietùs). — Baltistica 27(1), 1992, 41—42.

65

A circumflex (falling) accent would indicate that their root is *anit, i.e. without a laryngeal. This points to different roots. Both the verb meaning ‘to dam, to pour’ itself and its derivatives in the Baltic languages have only an acute accent (Lithuanian falling-rising accent): lieti, Latvian liēt, liētus, Lithuanian lietūs (liētų), lýti, Latvian līt, lytùs (lýtų), Latvian līts ‘rain’. If we assume that these river names nevertheless belong to the root of the verb lieti, the question arises how their circumflex accent came about. No cause for metatony is apparent.

In Courland, the proper names Lētža, a river, Embūte, Lētžu-upe, otherwise Leītža (flowing into the Venta), Nigranda, and Lētži ‘single farmstead’ in Briņķī⁷¹ are known. These are names of Curonian origin; this also explains the peculiarities of their root vowels: as they passed into Latvian (Latgalian), their ei apparently moved closer to the monophthong ē⁷². The alternation ei: ē occurs not only in roots and not only in Courland place names⁷³. It is noteworthy that an exact counterpart of this river name is found in the Upper Dnieper basin: Литиж, a right-bank tributary of the Usozh, a left-bank tributary of the Nerusa, a left-bank tributary of the Desna⁷⁴, which has ei in its root and apparently the same suffix (-иж- from Baltic *-īž- or *-ēj-) as the Curonian Leītža (from *Lēit-īž-ā; for the suffix compare Lithuanian Gum-yža, and for its accent Latvian Lētži⁷⁵). Hydronyms are generally formations dating from ancient times, so it is hardly appropriate to examine these Baltic river names in isolation from other names with a similar root, such as, for example, Лит (with variants Лить, Литка), south of the Pripyat, a right-bank tributary of the Gorsky Tikich, a right-bank tributary of the Sinyukha, and a left-bank tributary of the Southern Bug. Лит (Лить, Литка) is compared with Leitha, a river of Pannonian (Illyrian?) origin on the border between Lower Austria and Hungary, and with Old High German Līt-aha, and is therefore regarded as an Indo-European relic in Slavic territory. On the assumption that its original meaning was ‘muddy, clayey (river)’ (compare the Hungarian name for the Leitha, Sárvíz, i.e. ‘muddy river’), these hydronyms are etymologically linked with Old Prussian laydis ‘clay’ and Albanian leth ‘wet clay’. Lithuanian Leitā⁷⁶ is also assigned to these formations of Old European, but Indo-European, hydronymy. It is clear that this group includes not only Leitūs, Leītupalis, Leītė, Leītālė, Leīta 1542, but also Latvian Lētža, Leītža and Russian Литиж. However, this explanation, though well-founded, needs some refinement.

From Old Prussian laydis ‘clay’ as an etymon arose Old Prussian Layde and Lithuanian Lai̇dė, a river, in Pampėnai, a right-bank tributary of the Ister⁷⁷. Lithuanian *liesas ‘clay’ < *leisas, with root-vowel alternation related to Old Prussian layso ‘clay soil, clayey ground’⁷⁸, may be reflected in Liesūkas,

⁷¹ E n d z e l ī n s J. Latvijas PSR vietvārdi 1(2), Rīgā, 1961, 304.

⁷² E n d z e l ī n s J. Notes on Latvian place names. — Filologu biedrības raksti 6, 1926, 7—8 (hereafter — FBR) (= E n d z e l ī n s J. Selected Works 3(1), Riga, 1979, 431).

⁷³ H a u z e n b e r g a E. Ko vietu vārdi dod latviešu valodas fonētikai? — FBR 12, 1932, 126.

⁷⁴ T o p o r o v B. H. и Т р у б а ч е в О. H. Лингвистический анализ гидронимов Верхнего Поднепровья, Москва, 1962, 192.

⁷⁵ H a u z e n b e r g a E. Op. cit., 126.

⁷⁶ Т р у б а ч е в О.Н. Названия рек правобережной Украины, Москва, 1968, 219, 256 (su literatūra).

⁷⁷ V a n a g a s A. Lietuvių hidronimų etimologinis žodynas, 177.

⁷⁸ T o p o r o v B.H. Друсский язык. Словарь L, Москва, 1990, 41.

66

river, Šilalė. In a similar way, the hydronyms just mentioned, with the root Liet-, would indicate the existence of Baltic *leita- “clay,” cognate with Lithuanian laitas, whose current meaning is “a lump of clay, dough, resin, or something else used for pouring or plastering,” LKŽ VII 72, but which formerly meant “a lump of clay (used to seal the holes in the floor of a threshing barn and in an oven),” Būga RR, 2, 263, thus the same as Prussian laydis “clay.” The verbal base underlying these terms for clay is the verb lėti (-ja, lėja, -jo) “to smear with something, to plaster...” As can be seen, the verb has two accentual intonations; river names behave in the same way—Lithuanian has the circumflex, Latvian the acute.

The hydronyms with the root *Leit- differ from their appellative (Lithuanian laitas) in their root vowels. However, this is a regular ablaut in the root vocalism of cognate words; compare, for example, daigšlus: deigšlus “one that sprouts well,” gaidas: geidas “desire, whim,” gainys “stick for beating flax”: geinys “curved stick for beating flax,” klaišas “lame”: kleišas “having crooked legs,” šeivà: šaivà, šeimà: Latvian sàime.

As mentioned, K. Kuzavinis later changed his view of the structure and origin of *Lietava—he no longer considered it to derive from the appellative *lietava “(river) that overflows,” but instead thought it was a compound word formed from the participle *lieta and the noun *ava, which in ancient times meant “river, spring” (see above).

K. Kuzavinis’s reconstruction *lieta ava is, unfortunately, anemic: the gender of *ava “river, spring” is not specified. But that is hardly possible to determine. The Indo-European languages attest words of this root and meaning in Sanskrit avāni- fem. “riverbed, river, current,” avatá- masc. “spring” (< *au̯n-tó- s), Latvian avùots “spring” (= Baltic *avántas Būga RR III 889). That Lithuanian, too, had a cognate is suggested by the ancient name of a river and town in eastern Lithuania, Avantà, Russian Ованта (now Aluntà from *Avuntà)⁷⁹. But *ava “river, spring” is not attested. Therefore, it is very risky to reconstruct *Lieta ava or to seek the appellative *ava “river, spring” in river names such as Artavà, Asavà, Bikavà⁸⁰. This reconstruction by K. Kuzavinis also illustrates the problem. What is it—a combination of neuter or feminine-gender words? The fact that something is unattested does not at all mean that some form or lexeme could not have existed in the past. It may well be that, as has been suggested⁸¹, these words are cognate with our river name Ovà (acc. Ōvą), at Lekėčiai, a left-bank tributary of the Nemunas (< *Avā), which arose, however, not from *ava under the influence of Slavic languages, but as an allomorph with the lengthened grade of ablaut of the root *au- (av-) (*aų-ā). If this etymological explanation of Ovà is correct, Baltic data would suggest instead the existence of a feminine appellative *avā/*āvā “river, spring” (but not neuter *avo/*āvo) (for gender, compare also Latvian Āvas “peasant homestead” at Babīte). In that case, the construction must have been *lietā avā; once the two elements fused, it would have become *lietāvā, and today would be *lietova (with o

79 B ū g a K. RR 3, 511, 845, 889.

80 “I would not think that river names—Daũgava, Ābava, Bārtava, etc.—are compounds, or that their -ava means ‘river’,”—B ū g a K. RR 3, 845.

81 K r a h e H. Unsere ältesten Flußnamen, Wiesbaden, 1964, 43; V a n a g a s A. Lietuvių hidronimų etimologinis žodynas, 235.

67

from ã).

Thus, the derivation of *Lietava (from Lietáu-ka/Letaú-ka) from a phrase is impossible.

In the interfluve between the Neris and Šventoji rivers, two streams of the same name rise from the Lietauka bog (according to Russian maps from the end of the 19th century). The larger, 11 km long, flows past the villages of Keižionys, Karveliškės, Pereložai, and Vyšniālaukis, and joins the Neris from the right at Aŕnotiškiai (upstream of the mouth of the Šventoji). The “Cadastre of Lithuanian Rivers” gives its name as Letavą⁸², while the “Register of Lithuanian River and Lake Names” calls it Lietáuka, adding the variant form Liėtauką⁸³. The smaller stream, about 3 km long, rises from that bog north of Pereložai and flows into the Lietauka from the right. It is called Lietāvóčka⁸⁴.

Authentic information collected by K. Kuzavinis is of great importance for adequately explaining the origin of this microtoponym—the names of both the bog and the streams. K. Kuzavinis writes: “Having travelled around the area of that river and questioned many riverside residents in person, I learned that in the vernacular the river is now called as follows: L e t á u k a or L e t ā v k a (along the whole riverbank) and L i t ā v k a (by some elderly Russian residents of Pereložai village).” He immediately adds: “All three variants of the river name are dialect hybrids, which must first be subjected to linguistic analysis”⁸⁵. It should be said that those three variants of the river name requiring linguistic analysis are hybrids not only of dialects but also of languages, resulting from bilingualism.

Drawing on his own observations and those of other researchers (e.g., M. Vasmer), H. Lowmiański established that larger rivers generally do not take their names from ethnic groups. Larger ethnic groups do not name topographical features within their own territory after themselves. Smaller rivers, however, are often given names of ethnic origin.⁸⁶ What is meant here becomes clear from the interesting examples H. Lowmiański provides. The stream (rivulus) Szwed, mentioned in a document from 1724 near Słupocin, appeared after the Great Northern War and may be connected in some way with the Swedish invasion. Near Kuznica, the stream Litwinka flows into the Sidra (Siderka, Sidranka), a left-bank tributary of the Biebrza; its name means “Lithuanian” or “Lithuanian woman”⁸⁷.

The names of the bog in the interfluve between the Neris and Šventoji rivers and of the nameless streams flowing from it were apparently given by Russian settlers, most of whom fled to Lithuania and Livonia from the Vitebsk Governorate from the early 17th century onward, especially after the 1667 church reform, when persecution of Orthodox Old Believers began⁸⁸.

⁸² Lasinskas M., Macevičius J. and Jablonskis J. Cadastre of Lithuanian SSR Rivers 1, Vilnius, 1959, 179.

⁸³Register of Lithuanian SSR River and Lake Names, 92.

⁸⁴ Kudaba Č. How to Find a Lithuanian Stream? — Science and Life 8, 1978, 36; V. Vanagas A. Dictionary of Lithuanian SSR Hydronyms, 185.

⁸⁵ Kuzavinis K. The Origin of the Name Lithuania, 9.

⁸⁶ Lowmiański H. Początki Polski 1, Warszawa, 1963, 253, 255.

⁸⁷ Lowmiański H. Op. cit., 254. Plg. Słownik Geograficzny 10, Warszawa, 1889, 482.

⁸⁸ For more, see Karaliūnas S. The Linguosocial Situation of the Republic

68

In Belarusian, a Lithuanian woman is called by two words—limbinka and limoyka. Just as limbinka is the feminine form of the nouns limbin and liubin, so limoyka is the feminine form of the ethnonym limovec⁸⁹. In our case, however, what attracts greater interest are common nouns that researchers consider to have arisen through the de-ethnonymization of the words for a Lithuanian man and woman. Here are several clearer examples. In the western Belarusian dialects (Grodno region), a long haystack is called limoyka. That this is probably a metaphorical transfer of limoyka ‘Lithuanian woman’ is suggested by the fact that in Russian dialects around Tver and Novgorod, the word лимбин is used for a tall, narrow oatstack (unlike a round cone) (cf. Russian dial. лимбин ‘Lithuanian man’)⁹⁰. This explanation is supported by ляшок ‘a ten-foot haycock’, known from Belarusian Polesie and derived from the ethnonym лях ‘Pole’⁹¹. A similar origin is attributed to Ukrainian dial. лимовка ‘a dish made from dried fish, baked in dough with meat and onions’⁹². Corresponding to it is лимовка, used in the western part of Bryansk Region to mean ‘a dish made from wheat or pea flour mixed with water, filled with sauerkraut, smelt, or plums, and baked in a pan in an oven’⁹³. Less clear are Belarusian лимойка ‘a type of scythe’ and Russian dial. лимовка ‘a scythe with a long (straight) handle’, although researchers also suspect these to be of Lithuanian origin⁹⁴. For one thing, such scythes are used far from the Belarusian region—in northern Russia and Siberia; for another, it is thought that these scythes were made of cast steel⁹⁵; cf. Russian dial. лимка//лумка ‘a flat piece of lead or cast metal...’, лумаше ‘an opening through which molten metal is poured’, ямая изба ‘a hut built from diluted clay poured into wooden molds’⁹⁶.

These data show that in the western (and not only western) dialects of Belarusian, Russian, and partly Ukrainian, the word лимовка, derived from the term for a Lithuanian woman, and correspondingly a Lithuanian man, was once a living word. In this regard, A. Nepokupny provides interesting facts from the history of the Ukrainian language. In seventeenth-century historical documents, he managed to find the surname Лимовка recorded several times; on one occasion it even displaced the surname Лимовенко. Since this is a masculine surname, the author rightly concludes that the common noun лимовка was in use in seventeenth-century Ukrainian. It was formed with the suffix -ka

characteristic. — LKK 23, 23 (with bibliography).

⁸⁹ Слоўнік беларускай гаворкі паўночна-заходняй Беларусі яе пагранічча 2 (Д—Л), Мінск, 1980, 661—662 (toliau — СБГ).

⁹⁰ Словарь русских народных говоров 17, Ленинград, 1981, 71 (toliau — СРНГ).

⁹¹ Этымалагічны слоўнік беларускай мовы 6, Мінск, 1990, 12 (toliau — ЭСБМ).

⁹² Непокупный А. П. Балто-севернославянские языковые связи, Киев, 1976, 115.

⁹³ SRNG 17, 73.

⁹⁴ Фасмер М. ЭСРЯ 2, 502; Непокупный А. Указ. соч., 155—6; ЭСБМ 6, 12.

⁹⁵ Popova N. V. Areals and the etymology of two words with a transparent internal form. — Arealia Studies in Linguistics and Ethnography, Leningrad, 1975, 81.

⁹⁶ SRNG 17, 72–73.

69

from the stem лито́во- (cf. лито́вец, лито́вский), in the same way as, for example, the surname Краковка from Краков⁹⁷.

The word лито́вка was also probably used by Russians who settled there in the 17th century to name the marsh and the nameless streams flowing from it in the interfluve of the Neris and the Šventoji. That this was most likely the case is indicated by another circumstance. Sociolinguistic studies have established that the Slavicization of the Vilnius region—for example, the use of Polish—proceeded through Belarusian; in other words, Lithuanian peasants and residents of small towns first adopted Belarusian⁹⁸. It is therefore plausible that the names of some small topographic features were likewise given in Belarusian. For example, Letówka, a stream in Vilnius district, 75 versts from Vilnius⁹⁹, may have been named by Belarusian speakers after a Lithuanian woman (or man). Interestingly, besides Litávka, Lietauka also has the variant name Letávka. Since these river names and their variants are most likely the result of Slavic—Belarusian and Russian—linguistic influence, one may suppose that Belarusian dialects have, alongside the word for a Lithuanian лімвя́к, ліўя́к, also the variant леўя́к (with the vowel e)¹⁰⁰.

On the tongues of bilingual people—and nearly all the inhabitants of that region are bilingual—Лито́вка, Лето́вка, under the influence of Lithuanian, became Litávka/Letávka (the Slavic vowel o is rendered in Lithuanian by the short vowel a), and then Lietáuka, with the regular Lithuanian diphthong. In the speech of monolingual Lithuanians, who perceived that the names nevertheless contained the name of Lithuania and of a Lithuanian woman (or man), the roots of these river names may have been reshaped to match the ethnonym—thus giving rise to forms with the root diphthong Lietáuka, Liėtauka, Lietávočka, provided these are genuine vernacular forms (rather than forms reconstructed into the standard language by recorders or dictionary compilers, as happened, for example, with Letava). Evidence of Lithuanianization is seen in the fact that Lietávočka is pronounced dialectally as Letaukėlė¹⁰¹. This also shows that local speakers use Letavočka, with the root vowel e (whereas Lietávočka has already been normalized to the standard language).

There was another attempt to derive the name Lithuania from Slavic forms. On the basis of historical documents—the 1569 privilege of Sigismund Augustus, an act of the Ukmergė castle court from 1597, and others—A. Dubonis established that in the second half of the 16th century there was a leitis bailiwick belonging to the Anykščiai eldership, called in those documents воитовство Летувьское in one instance and wójtowstwo Lijietowskie in another. From this he drew the erroneous conclusion that the bailiwick was called Lietuvos, or Lietuvos, bailiwick in Lithuanian, since, supposedly, leitis/laitis was the old name for a Lithuanian and there was no difference between the terms leitis/laitis and Lietuva¹⁰². The actua-

⁹⁷ A. P. Nepokupny Baltic-North Slavic Language Contacts, 158—159.

Vidugiris A. Kalbų sąveikos klausimu. — Dubingiai, Vilnius, 1971, 235—253; to paties, Dėl kalbų kontaktavimo pietryčių Lietuvoje. — LKK 23, 1983, 46—58.

⁹⁹ Słownik Geograficzny 4, 1883, 846. Cf. Būga K. RR 1, 457; 3, 629.

¹⁰⁰ СБГ 2, 647, 662; ЭСБМ 6, 12.

¹⁰¹ Kuzavinis K. Lithuanian river names lie- (lei-), 136.

¹⁰² Dubonis A. The Lithuanian bailiwick. — Lituanistica 2, 1990, 97—102; idem, The leičiai of the estates of the Grand Duke of Lithuania. — Lituanistica 1(9), 1992, 8.

70

The following variants of the name of the said voivodeship are attested: у воитовъстве Летувьском (1569 act)¹⁰³, we wójtowstwie Liejtowskim (1597 act)¹⁰⁴, у воитовстве Левътевскомъ (1569 act), въ воитовстве Лоитевскомъ (1599 act)¹⁰⁵. This shows, first, that the Летувьском in the 1569 act is written incorrectly and should be corrected to Ле[и]тувьском. Second, the name had two Slavic suffixes; in other words, -овьское, -owskie is the same suffix as -евское, -ewskie. Furthermore, Летувьском in the 1569 act appears in a dialectal form, since in Belarusian dialects the stressed vowel o is pronounced as y in many places (e.g., вуз, вул, двур)¹⁰⁶. The suffix -овьское in the adjective Ле[и]товьское is the same as in the expression земли пустовьские, found in many judicial acts. It is not difficult to answer why the Slavic language used in acts in Lithuania needed two suffixes to form adjectives from the name of the lečiai (laičiai): their selection depended on whether the word ended in a hard or soft consonant; cf. лейтъ, лейть “a hired man on an estate” (early 15th century)¹⁰⁷. Thus, the Slavic forms of the name of the Lečiai voivodeship in no way allow us to reconstruct *Leitava, much less Lietuva. Despite the argumentation being inept and, in many cases, erroneous, the young historian’s idea may be correct: the name of Lithuania and the name of the institution of peasants who cared for the ruler’s horses, leitis/laitis, are related in origin. It is historians’ task to establish who these lečiai (laičiai) were and how they differed from other categories of peasants, whom the acts call конюхи (cf. the name of many Lithuanian villages, Kaniūkai) and конокормцы.

2. The Name of Lithuania and Its Meanings in (Eastern) Slavic Languages and Culture. Questions of Chronology

A new understanding of the origin of the name Lithuania, along with other contours of its development, begins to emerge when one examines and tries to explain those seemingly enigmatic facts that are in one way or another connected with Lithuania and its name. It may be asserted that no hypothesis concerning the origin of the name Lithuania is well-founded if it fails to explain those facts adequately or simply ignores them. These facts are of two kinds—cultural and historical. But strangest of all, both kinds of facts come from our eastern neighbors, the Slavs.

Among such enigmatic facts of Eastern Slavic culture connected with the name Lithuania, the first to mention is that in Ukrainian folk songs Литва refers to a band of young men who attack and abduct girls. One such song, beginning with the line Гайхала Литва “Lithuania attacked,” from the Vladi- district of Rivne Region

Dubonis A. The Lithuanian State, 100 (note 1).¹⁰³

Dubonis A. Op. cit., 101.¹⁰⁴

Dubonis A. The Leičiai of the Estates of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, 10, 18 (note 56).¹⁰⁵

¹⁰⁶ Блінава Э., Мяцельская Е. Беларуская дыялекталогія, Мінск, 1969, 31.

¹⁰⁷ ЭСБМ 5, Мінск, 1989, 280.

71

In the village of Stara Rafalovka in the Mirec district, one part of which is called Литва, Anatolij Nepokupnas recorded in 1969¹⁰⁸. Songs with this motif are known in the area of northern Ukrainian dialects—in Ukrainian Polesia, and also, here and there, south of Polesia—in Volhynia and Podolia. Ukrainian folklorists had known for a hundred years that the songs in which Lithuania figures are wedding songs. There are wedding songs in which Литва is called the bridegroom’s retinue. Such songs apparently reflect an archaic form of marriage—bride capture, in which the abduction of the bride was accompanied by a fight between two parties, for example, two clans¹⁰⁹. In this context, the rhyme Литва — битва (‘Lithuania—battle’) is not accidental, for example, in the song mentioned above: Наїхала Литва/Буде між нами битва — “Lithuania has attacked us/There will be a fight among us.” Thus, Ukrainian wedding folk songs clearly reflect mock battles as an element of wedding customs, and Литва seems to encode дружина, the bridegroom’s retinue as a band of warriors¹¹⁰. It is also of considerable interest that the rhyme Литва — битва occurs in duma songs—everyday Cossack songs—in which Lithuania appears as a land of “a hundred little horses”¹¹¹, long famous for its horses.

Let us keep in mind the image of Lithuania portrayed in Ukrainian folk songs—we will have occasion to return to it! Russian bylinas—historical songs—preserved the memory of Vladimir of Kyiv for 800 or 900 years. The image of Lithuania in Ukrainian wedding songs may be about as old¹¹². Why did this happen—that the name of our land came to designate cultural elements and became a term for wedding customs? Under what historical and social circumstances did this occur?

We should probably begin looking for answers to these questions among the same eastern neighbors—Belarusians and Russians. In the sphere of state-level, interethnic communication and interaction, Литва obviously means a state, a country, a land. But in everyday speech, our ethnonym is used in a distinctive way. Across the mass of East Slavic dialects, the ethnonym литвины (литвяки, литва, литовцы) is applied to the local inhabitants of certain districts—Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians. For example, residents of the Moscow region call the Russians living to the west литва. Further south, Ukrainians call Belarusians литвины, as well as some northern Ukrainians. Residents of the northeastern part of Volhynia (Ukraine) and neighboring districts of Brest region (Belarus) consider the Belarusians living to the north—speakers of the principal Brest–Pinsk Belarusian dialects—to be литвины. These, in turn, nickname the speakers of the northern Yaselda and Brest dialects, as well

¹⁰⁸ Nepokupnas A. Baltai slavų giminaičiai, Vilnius, 1983, 38.

¹⁰⁹ On bride-capture weddings in Lithuanian culture, see Baldauskas J. Pirktinės vestuvės. — Mūsų tautosaka 10, Kaunas, 1935, 3—123.

¹¹⁰ Непокупный А. П. — Общая лексика германских и балто-славянских языков, Киев, 1989, 67.

¹¹¹ Nepokupnas A. Baltic-Slavic kin, 39—41.

¹¹² For the preservation of historical tradition in the memory of ordinary (rural) people, a particularly fascinating account is the one recorded by M. Davainis-Silvestravičius in 1887 from the peasant Kiklikis in the village of Pabebirviai (Raseiniai district, Girkalnis parish). It seems to reflect people and events of the 11th or 12th century; see Giedro iš M. The Rulers of Thirteenth Century Lithuania: the Theory of Anglo-Saxon Origins. — Lituanistica 2(18), 1994, 3—20.

72

as well as speakers of the Hrodna-Baranavichy dialects, and so on. In short, the usage of the ethnonyms литвйны (литвя́ки, литва́, лито́вцы) is oriented northward and northwestward¹¹³—in other words, toward the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Slavic lands belonging to it, and ethnographic Lithuania. It has long been known that in the 16th–17th centuries these ethnonyms referred not only to actual Lithuanians, the inhabitants of ethnographic Lithuania, but also to the Slavic inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. But the ethnonyms литвйны (литвя́ки, литва́, лито́вцы) and Литва as a name for a land or territory are nevertheless associated primarily with northwestern Belarus¹¹⁴.

On this occasion, it is also worth recalling that in J. Gutslaff’s Estonian grammar, published in Tartu in 1648, the German word Pole ‘Pole’ is translated as Leitte. In fact, Leitte is the Estonian name for a Lithuanian, borrowed from Latvian (leitis ‘Lithuanian’). Southern Estonia was under Polish rule from 1561 to 1625 (officially until 1629), and the Polish Livonian regions were then administratively and culturally closely connected with Lithuania, above all with Vilnius. It is understandable, then, why Estonians could use the same word for Lithuanians and Poles¹¹⁵.

Researchers’ conclusion that, with few exceptions, the ethnonyms литвйны (литвя́ки, литва́, лито́вцы) are not autonyms for East Slavic populations—that is, names by which they would call themselves—is noteworthy¹¹⁶. This conclusion is supported by the peculiar meanings литва́ has in Russian dialects. In Russian dialects around Onega, литва́ is used with the unusual meaning ‘people, nationality’. In the dialects of Tomsk region, литва́ means non-Russian local inhabitants, for example, Чудь называли остяками и литвой—‘The Chud were called Ostyaks and Lithuanians.’ In the Tula area, peasants who came from a neighboring village to mow hay are also insultingly called литва́: “Usually these are peasants from the neighboring village of Voskresenskoye, local Russians; the village is 3 km away, on the same western bank of the Upa as the village of Selino. The people of Selino shout across the river to the haymakers: Эй, литва́ поганая! ‘Hey, you vile литва́!’ In all other respects, relations with the people of Voskresenskoye are friendly”¹¹⁷.

When interpreting this testimony by Russian ethnographers, one should bear in mind that the hydronym Упа is of Lithuanian (Baltic) origin, and that the expression литва поганая meant ‘Pagan Lithuania’ in Russian chronicles and, alongside литва безбожная, was a favored derogatory description of Lithuania. Another insulting expression from the Tula area is литовские люди¹¹⁸. Archaeological, linguistic, and historical evidence indicates that Balts may have lived in the Upper Volga and Oka basin

¹¹³ Nepokupny A.P. Balto-North Slavic linguistic relations, 154; SBG 2, 661—662; Klimchuk F.D. The East Slavic ethnonym “Lithvins.” — Tartu Conference on Baltic Studies, 1985, October 9–12. Abstracts of Papers, Vilnius, 1985, 168—169.

¹¹⁴ Klimchuk F.D. Op. cit., 169.

¹¹⁵ Ariste P. How the Estonian calls Lithuania and the Lithuanian. — Baltistica 3, 1967, 205.

¹¹⁶ Klimchuk F.D. Op. cit., 169.

¹¹⁷ SRNG 17, 71.

¹¹⁸ SRNG 17, 73.

73

to preserve their culture, and perhaps in some places their language, until the 12th century, and that, in V. Toporov’s view, a period of Baltic-Rus’ bilingualism cannot be ruled out entirely¹¹⁹.

In the Onega region, литва also means Poles and Cossacks who, during times of unrest and revolt, raided Russia’s northern regions. In Novgorod dialects, литва была was said when referring to the civil wars of the early 17th century and the Swedish intervention¹²⁰.

A review of the features and meanings of Lithuanian ethnonyms used in living East Slavic speech shows that, first, these ethnonyms are not autonomous for East Slavic speakers; second, литва has a collective, not a regional or territorial, meaning—that is, it denotes a group or band of people; and third, литва is a synonym of the ethnonyms литвины, литвяки, литовцы, which have plural forms, and is a common (not a proper) noun. Whether the appellative литва arose through the de-ethnonymization of the ethnonym Литва, or whether this is a preserved older, pre-ethnonymic form, is a question that remains to be answered.

In 15th- and 16th-century acts of the Lithuanian state, литва refers to peasants who had moved from Lithuania to Russian territories¹²¹.

The image of Lithuania presented in Russian chronicles differs little from that depicted in living East Slavic speech. To confirm that Литва in Russian chronicles means not only a region or country (страна), but also people, Lithuanians (народ, литовцы), it is enough to look at the indexes of the volumes of the “Полного русу метраў” collection. For greater certainty, let us take several annalistic entries from “Новгородская первая летопись младшего извода” (first half of the 13th century), which clearly show that the subject is people (rather than a region or territory): 1183: На ту же зиму бишася плесковици с Литвою, и много ся пакости изьдья плесковицемъ¹²². — “That winter the Pskovians fought with the Lithuanians, and the latter did much harm to the Pskovians.” 1204: В то же лѣто побѣдиша Олговици Литву и избиша их 7 сот да тысячу¹²³. — “That year the Olgovichi defeated the Lithuanians and killed 1,700 of them.” 1213: В Петрово говѣние изъиха[?] Литва безбожная... и много створиша зла и отъидоша¹²⁴. — “During the fast of St. Peter, the godless Lithuanians arrived... and did much evil and departed.” “Новгородская первая летопись старшего извода” (13th–14th century) reports that, after Mindaugas’s death, during a period of turmoil, 300 Lithuanians fled to Pskov in 1265 with their wives and children: Тогда же вѣтъгоша Литвы въ Плесковъ съ 300 с женами и с дѣтьми, и крестил я князь Святъслав¹²⁵.

¹¹⁹ Топоров В.Н. Древняя Москва в балтийской перспективе. — Балто-славянские исследования, Москва, 1982, 3—27.

¹²⁰ СРНГ 17, 71.

¹²¹ Леонтович Ф. Акты литовской метрики 1, вып. 2, Варшава, 1897, XIII (rodyklės).

¹²² Новгородская первая летопись старшего и младшего изводов, Москва-Ленинград, 1950, 227.

¹²³ Op. cit., 246.

¹²⁴ Op. cit., 250.

¹²⁵ Op. cit., 85, 314.

74

In one of the most beautiful works of 13th-century Russian literature, “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land” (”Слово о погибели Русской земли”), where no shortage of hyperbole is spared in order to extol the grandeur and world renown of Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Kievan Rus’, it is told, among other things, that in Vladimir Monomakh’s name Половьци дети своя полошаху в колыбели, а Литва из болота на светлъе выникываху, а Угры твердяху каменьи городы железными вороты, абы на них Володимеръ великий тамо не взъехал¹²⁶ — “The Polovtsians frightened their children in their cradles; the Lithuanians did not emerge from the swamps, while the Ugrians fortified their stone cities with iron gates so that great Vladimir would not ride in there.” Understandably, only people could have failed to emerge from the swamps!

The understanding that Литва means people, Lithuanians, as a certain collective whole, is so strong in the minds of the authors and compilers of Russian chronicles that it finds linguistic expression; compare Литва взяли Одуевъ¹²⁷ — “The Lithuanians took Oduyev.” ТоежезимыЛитваволостиТфѣрьскииимали¹²⁸ — “That same winter the Lithuanians had occupied the Tver’ districts.” Того же лѣта Литва взяли Коршевъ¹²⁹ — “That year the Lithuanians captured Korshev.” With Литва as the subject, the verb is used in the plural form!

“The Tale of Bygone Years” (”Повесть временных лет”), the so-called Chronicle of Nestor, is, in V. Kiparsky’s words, “the principal source for the ancient history of Eastern Europe”¹³⁰. “The Tale of Bygone Years” has survived in several copies dating from the 14th century, but it recounts events of the 10th and 9th centuries. The basis of all the copies is the principal redaction, or protograph, prepared by the monk Nestor (1056—1116) at the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery. Also included is the so-called catalogue of peoples, compiled at the end of the 11th century (between 1093 and 1095). Among various other peoples, the Lithuanians—and, correspondingly, the name Lithuania—are mentioned here for the first time in Russian chronicles:

Въ Афетовѣже части съдятъ Русь, Чюдь и вси языци: Меря, Мурома, Весь, Мърдва, Заволочская Чюдь, Пърмь, Печера, Ямь, Угра, Литъва, Зимъгола, Кърсь, Лѣтъгола, Либь. Ляхове же и Пруси и Чюдь присѣдять къ морю Варяжьскому¹³¹. — “In Japheth’s part dwell Rus’, Chud, and all the peoples: Merya, Muroma, Ves’, Mordva, Zavolochye Chud, Perm, Pechora, Yam, Ugra, Lithuania, Zemigola, Korsi, Letgola, and Lib. The Poles, Prussians, and Chud, however, border the Varangian Sea.”

A few pages later, the Chronicle of Nestor repeats the catalogue of peoples, but in a somewhat different context:

126 Б е г у н о в Ю. К. Памятник русской литературы XIII века ”Слово о погибели Русской земли”, Москва-Ленинград, 1956, 183—184.

127 Полное собрание русских летописей 4 (Новгородская четвертая летопись), Петроградъ, 1915, col. 405 (toliau — ПСРЛ).

128 ПСРЛ 15 (Рогожский лѣтописецъ), Петроградъ, 1922, col. 72.

129 ПСРЛ 15, col. 75.

130 K i p a r s k y V. Finnougrier und Slaven zu Anfang der historischen Zeit. — Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 42, Wiesbaden, 1970, 1.

131 Ш а х м а т о в ъ А. А. Повѣсть временныхъ лѣтъ, Петроградъ, 1916, 3—4.

75

And these are other peoples who pay tribute to Rus’: the Chud, Merya, Ves’, Muroma, Cheremis, Mordva, Perm, Pechora, Yam, Lithuania, Semigallia, Curonians, Noroma, and Livs; these have their own languages, being descended from the tribe of Japheth, and live in the northern lands¹³². — “And here are other peoples that pay tribute to Rus’: the Chud, Merya, Ves’, Muroma, Cheremis, Mordva, Perm, Pechora, Yam, Lithuania, Semigallia, Curonians, Noroma, and Livs; these have their own languages, being descended from the descendants of Japheth, who live in the northern regions.”

These testimonies from the principal source for the early history of Eastern Europe may seem fragmentary and meager, but their scholarly and historical significance is so great that it seemed necessary to present them here in full. Consider, for example, the question that concerns us: in the copy quoted here and philologically edited with the meticulous care of a jeweler by A. Shakhmatov, a unique form of our country’s name, Литъва, is recorded, coinciding with the form currently in use Lietuva. Other copies of the “Tale of Bygone Years” have Литва¹³³, that is, a form without т, or the ultra-short ь. What, then, is the historical relationship and chronology of these forms?

In the church Slavonic written monuments preserved in copies dating from the second half of the 10th century, the yers ъ and ь are often confused; even more often, in certain positions, they are omitted, and if they are written, it seems to be only through imitation of older texts. This marks the beginning of the fall of the reduced vowels—not the beginning of a common Slavic phenomenon, but of a unified process characteristic of the East Slavs¹³⁴. Among the West and South Slavs, this process had begun a century earlier. As early as 828, the West Slavic form chneze is found in the Annals of Sancti Canuti, in place of Proto-Slavic * knędzъ, “prince”¹³⁵. By the late 11th and early 12th centuries, when Nestor was compiling and editing the archetype of the “Tale of Bygone Years” at the Kyiv Cave Monastery, the wave of yer loss had advanced so far that they could no longer be written in unstressed positions. And what of copies from the 14th century and later! Yet, following the example of older texts, Nestor wrote the names in the catalogue of peoples with yers. It is known that Nestor used an older chronicle, which A. Shakhmatov calls the Primary Compilation (Начальный свод)¹³⁶, consisting of annalistic entries beginning with the year 852 (6360). It is evidently imitation of older writings, and nothing else, that should explain the fact that among the spellings of Lithuania’s name in Ukrainian historical documents from 1352–1389 there are also forms with the yer ъ: Литва, Литвы, Литъвы, Litwy, Литву, Литвою, в Литве¹³⁷. It follows that the form Литва developed from the form Литъва

¹³² Шахматовъ А. А. Повѣсть временныхъ лѣтъ. 10.

¹³³ ПСРЛ 1 (Лаврентьевская летопись), Москва, 1926, col. 4,11; 2 (Ипатьевская летопись), Москва, 1962, col. 4,8; 38 (Радзивиловская летопись), Ленинград, 1989, col.11, 13, 66; Pomniki dziejowe Polski 1, Warszawa, 1960, 551, 557, 702.

¹³⁴ Kiparsky V. Russische historische Grammatik 1, Heidelberg, 1963. 93; Горшкова К. В., Хабургаев Г. А. Историческая грамматика русского языка, Москва, 1981, 65—67.

¹³⁵ Kiparsky V. Loc. cit.; Бирнбаум Х. Праславянский язык. Достижения и проблемы в его реконструкции, Москва, 1987, 189.

¹³⁶ Шахматов А. А. Указ. соч., XXII.

¹³⁷ Словник староукраїнської мови XIV—XV ст. 1, Київ, 1977, 549.

76

with the jer disappearing in an unstressed position. Thus, Литва in the historical sources of Kievan Rus’ and other East Slavic sources cannot possibly reflect the Lithuanian form * Lietuva, as is sometimes asserted unthinkingly in our scholarly literature on the subject. Being in a strong position, that is, bearing stress, the ultra-short ь and ъ developed into the normal vowels e and o. Therefore, Russian лито́вец ‘Lithuanian’ and лито́вский ‘Lithuanian, Lithuanian (adj.)’ regularly arose phonetically from the proto-forms *литъ-вък- and *литъ-вьск-, formed from the original form Литъва. Thus, Russian лито́вец does not indicate that there was a variant form Lietavà, as some of our researchers would have it. The original form Литъва is supported not only by Ukrainian Литва́, лито́вский and Belarusian Літва́, літов́скі, but also by Polish Litwa, litewski. The phonetic development here is of the same type as, for example, Russian лоб, gen. лба ‘forehead’, Polish łeb, gen. łba ‘head’, alongside Old Russian лъбъ ‘skull’, Old Church Slavonic лъбъ ‘skull’, or Russian сон, gen. сна ‘sleep’, Polish sen, gen. snu, alongside Old Church Slavonic сънъ. It is noteworthy that the Slavic name for Lithuania, Litva, behaves in terms of sound correspondences as though it were a native word; cf. Old Church Slavonic zima: Lithuanian žiemà, Old Church Slavonic iti: Lithuanian eiti. In fact, it was borrowed from Lithuanian. The regular sound correspondence characteristic of common words inherited from ancient times by the Slavic and Baltic languages suggests that Lietuva entered the Slavic languages long ago.

According to the latest research, by the 9th century the ultra-short ь and ъ had probably already replaced Proto-Indo-European short i and u throughout the Slavic-speaking area (= Lithuanian i and u). They are thought to have developed into ь and ъ around the 8th century.¹³⁸ Thus, Lietuva must have entered the Slavic languages before the 8th century. The monophthongization of diphthongs is considered to have occurred in the Slavic languages in the 5th–6th centuries.¹³⁹ When this happened among the East Slavs is indicated by river names: Russian Лучеса (in the Upper Dnieper basin) and Belarusian Гуя (in the Nemunas basin). These derive from Lithuanian Laukesà and Gaujà. It is thought that the Slavs may have acquired these names as early as the 5th century, when, moving north from the south, they spread across Baltic territory. Probably not long afterward, the au in these hydronyms developed into Slavic ū. But the date of this phenomenon can be established from an entirely different Slavic periphery—the south. The Slavs still had the diphthongs ei, ai, eu, au intact when they borrowed numerous words from the Goths in the 3rd–4th centuries; cf. Gothic kaupon, kausjan, kaisar, leihwa, gabeins and Slavic kupiti ‘to buy’, kusiti ‘to tempt’, cěsarъ ‘emperor’, lichva ‘interest’, gobino ‘wealth’. This shows that diphthongs in the Slavic languages were monophthongized in the 5th–6th centuries. It would be logical to suppose that Lietuva entered the Slavic languages along with the river names Laukesà and Gaujà. Thus, Lietuva=Литъва was borrowed by the Slavs in the 5th century or somewhat earlier. There is no doubt that at that time the name of Lithuania had the form * Lietuva. The Latvian leitīs indicates that the root contained the diphthong ei.

In the “Tale of Bygone Years,” the recorded ethnonymy is divided into two groups in terms of structural and grammatical meaning: collective names and ethnonyms expressed in the usual plural form. The group of collective names comprises: 1) names ending in -а (sometimes following a palatalized consonant), e.g., зимъгола/зимигола, лѣтъгола, литъва, меря, мърдва/мордъва,

138 Stieber Z. Zarys gramatyki porównawczej języków słowiańskich, Warszawa, 1979, 28—29; Бирнбаум Х. Праславянский язык. Достижения и проблемы в его реконструкции, 84.

139 Stieber Z. Op. cit., 23—24; Бирнбаум Х. Указ соч., 49.

77

морома/норома/нерома, пещера, угра/югра and 2) names ending in -ь (< *-i), e.g., весь, корсь, либь, пермь, людь, ямь (in the Novgorod chronicles also водь, сумь). The principal ethnonym in the Nestorian chronicle, русь, which occurs only in this form, also belongs to this group. It is easy to see that all the collective ethnonyms, with the exception of русь, are names of Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes and peoples. They are contrasted with Slavic ethnonyms that have a plural form, such as: деревляне, поляне, вятичи, кривичи, дулъби, хървате, etc.¹⁴⁰. From this, researchers conclude that the collective names are Slavic renderings of the self-designations of ethnonyms by which the Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes and peoples called themselves.¹⁴¹ In other words, the Slavs borrowed from the languages of these tribes and peoples both the form of the ethnonyms and their collective meaning; cf., for example, весь < vepsā, сумь < suomi, ямь < hāme, and apparently русь < Finnish ruotsi ‘Swedes’.

The same applies to ethnonyms ending in -a, including Литъ- ва/Литва. Thus, both the original form *Leituvā itself and its collective meaning—clearly attested in the oldest monument of Eastern European history, the “Tale of Bygone Years,” as well as the meaning “народ, people (Lithuanians)” in other Russian chronicles—apparently arose not in Slavic but in ancient Lithuanian culture and language. Having come into contact with Lithuanian tribes around the 5th century AD, over the centuries of interaction the Slavs probably adopted what was already established. Such, it seems, was the collective meaning of *Leituvā recorded in the Nestorian chronicle, where the name of our people appears not merely as an ethnonym but as a collective common noun: Old Russian литъва ‘Lithuanians’.¹⁴²

Now the question naturally arises: to what extent, if at all, is such a collective meaning of *Lietuvā supported by evidence from Lithuanian itself? Recall that, as has been noted more than once in reviewing previous research, alongside Lietuvā there was also the variant form Lietavā. We can answer the question in the affirmative: in contemporary Lithuanian and its dialects there are quite a number of nouns with the suffixes -uva/-ava that have a collective meaning; cf.:

bernavà ‘a group of young men, lads’ Ck, Dgls (LKŽ I 769);

brolavà ‘brotherhood, brothers and sisters’ Užp, Str, Ds, Dgl; cf. The whole brolava gathered (brothers, brothers’ children, brothers’ daughters with their husbands...) Ds (LKŽ I 1069);

broliavà ‘brotherhood, brothers and sisters’ Dglš (LKŽ I 1069);

broluvà, bról(u)va ‘brotherhood, brothers and sisters’ Trgn, Ktk (LKŽ I 1072);

kėltuva, keltuvà ‘a group of cattle, herd; cattle’ Mž, BB, Dsn, Ad, Tvr (LKŽ V 551);

poniavà ‘gentry, many nobles’ Dglš (LKŽ X 428);

sesiuvà ‘all the sisters’ Dglš (LKŽ XII 438);

sesuvà ‘sisters’ children’ Trgn; cf. We are only four sisters, but the sesu(v)õs are already a whole crowd Trgn (LKŽ XII 457);

140 Хабургаев Г. А. Этнонимия ”Повести временных лет”, Москва, 1979, 167—169.

141 Хабургаев Г. А. Указ. соч., 218.

142 Fasmer M. ЭСРЯ 2, 502.

78

šašavà “a group of small children” Ml (LKŽ XIV 537);

šimtavà “the tenth decade of life” Lb, cf. Ana nukaršus, gal jau šimtavõji Lb (LKŽ XIV 822);

šišavà “a group, a flock (of children)” Vdš, Ml, Prng (LKŽ XIV 915);

šunavà “a pack of dogs, a dog pack; a gang of rowdy rascals, scoundrels” Švnč, Dv, Tvr, Lbv, Slk, Str (LKŽ XV 354);

šuniavà “a pack of dogs, a dog pack; a gang of rowdy rascals, scoundrels” Lp, Rtn, Pv, Vv (LKŽ XV 360).

* Lietuvà=литъва “Lithuanians” fits neatly by meaning into this class of collective common nouns. This inclusion, in turn, raises the question of what that collective, that group of people—that is, the original social group—was that was called by the common noun * lietuvà = литъва.

3. The name of Lithuania, its related forms and derivatives

As is evident from the discussion, Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian Литва and Polish Litwa developed regularly from the oldest form, attested as литъва in Nestor’s Chronicle (“The Tale of Bygone Years”). In sound, it coincides with the authentic name of Lithuania, Lietuvà < *Leituva, still in use today, and was borrowed by the Slavs around the fifth century AD. The form Litva (without the yer ъ), attested in Nestor’s Chronicle and other ancient East Slavic written monuments, likewise derives from литъва and does not point to a supposedly Lithuanian form *Lietva. The earliest attestations of the name of Lithuania in Western and Central European historical sources—the Quedlinburg Annals of 1009 (in confinio Rusciae et L i t u a e)¹⁴³ and the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle of the eleventh century (contra L i t u u a m acies movit)¹⁴⁴—unfortunately, whether we like it or not, have the Slavic form of the name¹⁴⁵ and therefore do not indicate a Lithuanian *Lietva either. At first, before their contacts with Lithuania had yet expanded, the peoples of Central and Western Europe received information about Lithuania mainly through the Slavs.

Estonians now call Lithuania Leedu or Leedumaa (maa “land”). Although the stem Leedu “Lithuania” and leedu “Lithuanian, Lithuanian” is recorded lexicographically late, only in the eighteenth century, it existed in Estonian earlier—as shown, for example, by the fact that the hare (Lapus europaeus), called Litauerhase in Baltic German, is called lietujänes in the dialects of Central Estonia (with dialectal ē diphthongized to ie). Thus the stem Leedu, leedu is derived from lētu or lētu (+ a vowel) and corresponds exactly to Lietuvà or its intermediate form *Lẹ̄tuvā, which the Estonians borrowed at the beginning of the thirteenth century¹⁴⁶.

Scriptores rerum Prussicarum 1, Leipzig, 1861, 237.

Historical Monuments of Poland, edited by A. B i e l o w s k i, Warszawa, 1960, 495.

K a b e l k a J. Introduction to Baltic Philology, 111. Cf. S a l y s A. The Origin of the Name of Lithuania, 696.

A r i s t e P. How the Estonian Names Lithuania and the Lithuanian. — Baltistica 3, 1967, 205—207.

79

The form Lietuvą was well known to our northern relatives, the Latvians. It is found in the dictionary of K. Mülenbach and J. Endzelīns (EH I 757), and occurs in folk songs, where it has a peculiar loc. sing. form unattested anywhere else: Saki, saki, sakulyte/Kuo redzēji Lietuvėj? — “Tell me, tell me, little magpie, what did you see in Lithuania?” BW 2617.5. One or two place names denoting places of residence have been formed from the stem Lietuv-: Lietuvietis² Krimulda, Lietuvieši Vecgulbene. The juxtaposition Lietuvietis²/Lietvietis² Krimulda¹⁴⁷ shows that Lietuvietis² derives from Lietuvietis² through syncope of the vowel u, and Lietvieši² Vējavą—from *Lietuvieši. Thus, *Lietuva is not involved here either.

Besides Lietuvą, the related form Lietavą was also used in the past. Lietavų was still recorded from living Lithuanian speech in the dialect of the Lithuanians of Zietela (Grodno region, Belarus). The name for a Lithuanian, lietaviškis, was also formed here with the suffix -iškis (as in Sasnavą: sasnaviškis). Lietava, with the derivative lietavnieks, seems to have been more widely used in eastern Latvia, for example in Drusti (ME II 506, EH I 757), and is mentioned eight times in Latvian folk songs. Place names are attested in more than one instance, such as Lietavas² Graši, Lietavietis Ranka (cf. Elger’s dictionary lietavietis “Lithuanian”), Lietavieši² Vecgulbene, Lietavnieki² (several farmsteads in eastern Latvia)¹⁴⁸. Lat. lietavnieki “Lithuanians” may perhaps be compared with litovniki “the same” in the Novgorod and Pskov chronicles; thus the stem Litov- < Lithuanian *Lietav- is visible here. But this interpretation rests more on areal than on phonetic considerations (phonetically, litov- may also derive from *litúv-).

There was yet another variant of the name Lithuania.

In explaining the origin of the name Lithuania, considerable importance is attached—and not without good reason—to the Latvian name for a Lithuanian, leitis, pl. leiši. Researchers differ in their opinions on how this name arose. To explain the formation of Latv. leitis, J. Otrębski posited the existence of a separate form of the name Lithuania, *Leitā. J. Otrębski also derived leitis, pl. leiši from it with the possessive suffix -io- < *leitiai¹⁴⁹. A. Salys held a similar view: Latv. leitis “Lithuanian,” an old possessive adjective, was formed from *Leitā (> *Lietā)¹⁵⁰. J. Otrębski further added that the relationship between the vowels in the root forms Lith. leit- and Latv. leit- was supposedly the same as, for example, that between dėvas and dēvē. In other words, leitis has the diphthong ei instead of ie because it was supposedly derived (with respect to *Leitā)¹⁵¹. A. Bezzenberger also derived Latv. leitis from *Leitā, but mistakenly regarded *Leitā as a dialectal (High Latvian) form originating from Slavic Litva (with dialectal diphthongization of i)¹⁵².

K. Kuzavinis conjectured that leitis developed from the older form *leitūs (living-

¹⁴⁷ Būga K. RR 3, 613; Endzelīns J. Latvijas PSR vietvārdi 1(2), 340.

¹⁴⁸ Būga K. RR 3, 613; Endzelīns J. Op. cit., 340; to paties, Darbu izlase 4(2), Rīgā, 1982, 389.

¹⁴⁹ Otrębskis J. Gramatyka języka litewskiego 1, 3; to paties, Balt. *leitā, 201.

¹⁵⁰ Salys A. Lietuvos vardo kilmė, 695.

¹⁵¹ Otrębskis J. Loc. cit.

¹⁵² Bezzenberger A. Lettische Dialektstudien, Göttingen, 1885, 134 (išn).

80

occurring alongside *leituvis > lietuvis) like pietūs ‘south’ — from pietūs ‘south’¹⁵³. V. Mažiulis likewise derived leitis from *leituvis, relying on the reconstructed form *Lietuva and citing as a parallel Latin Sudi, German Suder ‘the Suduvians’ < *sūdu-¹⁵⁴.

From phonetics alone, it is impossible to say whether the proto-form of leitis was *leitįa- or *leituvi a- (but certainly not *leituįa-, since the variant of the name Lithuania *Lietuvā > *Lietuā never existed). For, as the change of Lithuanian pietūys to pietūs shows, the phonetic development of *leituįa- into leitis through the intermediate stage *leitųia- is entirely possible—precisely the same development was undergone by the Latvian ethnonym; cf. dialectal latuvis, latuvisks ME II 425, EH I 722 > latvis, latvisks > latiskis in Nīgranda, Saldus. Stress on the root would have facilitated the syncope of the vowel u and the elimination of the consonant v: *léituvi a-). Thus, further evidence is needed to resolve the question.

Among the many Latvian names and microtoponyms with the root Leit-, Leiš-¹⁵⁵ there is not a single one containing -o- or -u-. Common nouns behave the same way; cf. leitis ‘Lithuanian’ (fem. leitiete) in Jaunseseve; ‘a pig brought in from Lithuania’ in Džūkste; ‘the large butter (in which the buttermilk has not separated)’ in Gramzda, Priekule, Saldus; Leiši nom. pl. ‘Lithuania’ in Nīca; leitene ‘Lithuanian woman’ (in folk songs); leitīne ‘same’ in Dunika; Leitiēne ‘same’ in Aknīste; leitiēns ‘a small, young Lithuanian; someone who behaves or dresses like a Lithuanian’ in Alūksne, Pļaviņas; ‘a pig brought in from Lithuania’ in Džūkste (ME II 446—447, EH I 731—732). The surname Leitis is found in historical documents concerning Courland: Merttin Leitte 1582, Jurgen Leytte¹⁵⁶.

As the geographic distribution shows, names for a Lithuanian man or woman with leit- are concentrated in western Latvia, in Courland, but are also known in eastern Latvia, where many place names have this root. It is therefore thought that leitis, plural leiši, originated in Courland and spread eastward from there. In eastern Latvia, as mentioned, Lietuva, Lietava, and their derivatives with the expected diphthong ie in the root are found. The diphthong ei in the name leitis is regarded as a Curonian alteration of the regular diphthong ie¹⁵⁷.

The Latvian name for a Lithuanian, and the place names and microtoponyms derived from it, are distinguished by an unusual root vocalism and the absence of -u-/-ū-. These features must be explained together. They suggest that there was another, separate variant of the name Lithuania, characteristic of the northwestern part of the Lithuanian area, from which the Curonians, and consequently the Latvians, borrowed it. By analogy with lietùvis, formed with the suffix -io- from the collective noun *lietuvā = литъва ‘Lithuanians’, it may be assumed that Latvian leitis, plural leiši < *leitiai, with the same suffix denoting affiliation, developed from the collective common noun *leitā ‘Lithuanians’. Both *leituvi a- (> lietuvis) and *leiti a- (> leitis) originally denoted a member of that collective, that group of people

¹⁵³ Kuzavinис K. — Lietuvos vardo kilmė, 14.

¹⁵⁴ Мажюлис В. К балтийскому и индоевропейскому дативу ед. ч., 41, išn. 111.

¹⁵⁵ Būga K. RR 3, 613; Endzelīns J. Latvijas PSR vietvārdi 1(2), 291—292.

¹⁵⁶ Kiparsky V. Die Kurenfrage, Helsinki, 1939, 302.

¹⁵⁷ Endzelīns J. Rec.: Die Kurenfrage von V. Kiparsky. Helsinki, 1939. — FBR 20, 1940, 251 (= Endzelīns J. Darbu izlase 3(2), Rīgā, 1980, 557).

81

the names and meant “belonging to Lithuania, to the *leitai.” *Lėta (> lėti̇s) may have retained the original diphthong ei intact because it was stressed. In some forms of the paradigms of the variants Lietuvà, Lietavà, stress fell on the final syllable (Lietuvà, Lietuvõs, Lietuvojè). In this unstressed position, the diphthong ei would have been monophthongized (> *ē), later developing into ie and becoming generalized throughout the paradigm¹⁵⁸. These formations and phonetic processes most likely took place on Lithuanian linguistic soil. One circumstance shows that this explanation of the emergence of the Latvian name for a Lithuanian is correct.

The court records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 15th–16th centuries managed to record a category of peasants who tended the ruler’s horses and were called l e i- č i a i—in the Slavic language of the records, леити, леити, леитеве. We have their authentic name, attested in our living language: it is the name of nine Lithuanian villages, Laĩčiai, in the districts of Anykščiai, Kupiškis, Molėtai, Pakruojis, Trakai, Ukmergė, and Varėna, as well as Laitėlai (two villages) and the hamlets Laitìškis in the districts of Anykščiai, Ukmergė, and Rokiškis¹⁵⁹. Laĩčiai, Laitėlai, Laitìškis have La-, arising from Le- through hardening of l; in addition, the root is stressed. Laĩčiai < Leiči̇ai (= леити) can only have developed from *leiṫai. This shows that the name for the peasants who tended the ruler’s horses exactly coincides with the Latvian name for Lithuanians, leiši < *lėti̇ai. These two words are cognate and thus belong to the same root (see below).

Since Latvian leiši < *lėti̇ai points to an earlier *Lėita, it is possible that, as A. Salys thought, the suffixes -uva/-ava were added later to Lietuvà, Lietavà—the collective meaning is actually conveyed not by the suffix itself but by the ending *-ā (< Indo-European *-aH). This is evident from cases in which a suffixed derivative and a form with the ending *-ā are functionally equivalent, e.g., šyšà “a band, troop, multitude”: šišavà “ditto.”

The emergence of the plural form (lietuvìs: lietùviai like brólis: brólai) seems to have played a decisive role in the development of our ethnonym. The plural form, built on the singular stem and stress pattern (lietùvis < *lietuvìa-: lietùviai < *lietuvìai), denoted individual members of the tribe (clan)—this followed from its very nature. This circumstance made it possible for the use of the collective form *lietuva = литъва “Lithuanians” to narrow in scope: initially it referred to Lithuanians as an indivisible whole, as a tribe (clan), and later only to the land and the state. Russian chronicles and the dialects of East Slavic languages still recorded a stage in the competition between the ordinary plural, formed from the singular, and the collective plural: литвины, литвяки, литовцы // литва, литъва. The need to distinguish individual members of a tribe or people from the tribe or people as an indivisible whole seems to have existed at all times. Even today, in some dialects, a distinction is made between lietùviai (sing. lietùvis) and lietuviai “the Lithuanian people” (e.g., in Gervėčiai)¹⁶⁰.

158 For this understanding of the origin of ie, see K a r a l i ū n a s S. Baltų kalbų struktūrų bendrybės ir jų kilmė. Vilnius, 1987, 165 ff.

159 J a b l o n s k i s J. Lietuviški žodžiai Senosios Lietuvos raštinių kalboje, Kaunas, 1941, 114–115.

160 S t u n d ž i a B. Plural personal-name oikonyms and their significance for reconstructing declension and accentuation systems. — LKK 21, 1981, 193.

82

4. Lithuania as a war band

When reading Russian chronicles, one encounters, as already mentioned, apparently incomprehensible and mysterious things connected with Lithuania and its name. Sometimes it is simply hard to believe that this could be so... One such puzzling matter, for example, is the Lithuanian fighting forces—or, more precisely, not so much the forces themselves as the way chroniclers refer to them.

The Russian chronicles very frequently mention Литовская сила or Литовская рать. What this means gradually becomes clear from broader contexts and fuller accounts. One such account describes a campaign into Lithuania in 1266 led by Daumantas, prince of Pskov—a Lithuanian! There was much fighting and plundering; Princess Gerdenienė and her two young princely sons were taken captive. The First Novgorod Chronicle says: Князь же Гердень совокупи около себе силу Литовскую, и погонится по нихъ.—“And Prince Gerden gathered the Lithuanian force around him and pursued them.” When the Pskovians saw the pursuit (погоню), they were standing firm on this side of the Daugava (from the Pskovian point of view, of course). Литва же начаша бродитися на сю сторону.—“The Lithuanians began to ford over to this side.” God aided Daumantas: many Lithuanians fell in battle, while others drowned in the river....толко убьжа одинъ князь Гердень в мальдружинѣ—“... only Prince Gerden escaped with a small war band”¹⁶¹. First of all, this shows that Литовская сила, or Литовская рать elsewhere in the chronicle, is nothing other than a war band (дружина); thus, these three terms are synonyms. But the strangest thing is that the ethnonym Lithuania: is placed alongside these terms: a band of warriors assembled by the prince, that is, his war band, was crossing the river. It is called Литва. Can this really be so!? Apparently, it can... After all, even in the cases cited earlier, where Litva clearly denotes people, Lithuanians (but not the country)—and there are hundreds of such cases in Russian chronicles—the reference is in fact not to Lithuanians in general, but to a band of warriors on a military campaign.

Let us continue looking through the Russian chronicles. One of them, known as the Rogozh Chronicle, relates events in Lithuania in the middle of the 14th century and is therefore fairly late. The chronicle says: “... крестилъ князя Литовскаго именемъ Евнутия и его дружину Литву¹⁶².—“... baptized the Lithuanian prince Jaunutis and his war band, Lithuania.” It goes on: “И пришедъ посолъ Тотуи и выдалъ Корьяда и его дружину Литву князю великому Семену Иванович[ю]¹⁶³.—“And the envoy Totui came and handed over Karijotas [Algirdas’s brother—S.K.] and his war band, Lithuania, to Grand Prince Semyon Ivanovich.” In the next column:...отпусти Корьяда и его дружину Литву¹⁶⁴.—“... released Karijotas and his war band, Lithuania.” Lithuania as a war band?! What is this?

¹⁶¹ The First Novgorod Chronicle, Older and Younger Recensions, 85, 314–315.

¹⁶² PSRL 15 (Rogozh Chronicle), col. 56.

¹⁶³ Op. cit., col. 58.

¹⁶⁴ Op. cit., col. 59.

83

The armed retinue of a duke is called Lietuva! There can be no mistake—it is written clearly and unambiguously several times.

(This is the moment to recall Ukrainian folk songs, in which Litva denotes a band of young men who attack and abduct girls, and especially the fact that in some wedding songs Litva is the groom’s retinue. The analogy with an armed retinue is obvious, and the inner structure of both phenomena can be described by the formula Primus inter paris—the first among equals (the duke, the groom—their retinue). Let us suppose that Lietuva (Litva) was originally, in fact, the name of an armed retinue, and that the word itself was a military term. It has been observed that, as historical, social, and cultural conditions change, military terminology that has lost its current relevance passes into the realm of customs—wedding customs in particular. In feudal Russia, князь was a military commander and the ruler of a territory, whereas in Belarusian folk culture князь is sometimes the groom, sometimes the best man or an attendant; княгиня is the bride, the young womanⁱ⁶⁵. In Old Russian, тысяцкий was a military commander; today, in Russian dialects, the word denotes both the groom’s godfather and the chief wedding stewardⁱ⁶⁶. If Lietuva (Litva) was originally a band of armed men, a tribe’s or military leader’s retinue, then the Eastern Slavic tribes that had contact with the Balts somewhere in the Dnieper region—the ancestors of present-day Ukrainians—would have borrowed Litva around the fifth century AD as a name for a band of warriors; it later became a wedding term in their language and culture, while retaining its older meaning. This could be an explanation for the emergence of the term Litva in Ukrainian wedding songs and of its specific meaning.

To tell the truth, the fact that in the chronicles of Kievan Rus and other Eastern Slavic chronicles Litva also means, among other things, an armed retinue (дружина) is nothing new. In his celebrated two-volume study on the beginnings of Lithuanian society and statehood, H. Lowmiański cites two notices by Russian chroniclers. The first concerns events of 1238: По том же лѣть Даниль же возведе на Кондрата Литвою Минъдога¹⁶⁷. — “That same year, Danil raised Mindaugas’s Lietuva against Konrad.” The second is from 1244: Придоша Литва и воеваша около Пересопницѣ Аишивно Роушькович¹⁶⁸. — “Lietuva came and Aišvinas Ruškavičius fought near Peresopnytsia.”

H. Lowmiański interprets these notices as follows: “In both cases, as in many others, Litva means neither Lithuanian descent nor a territory, but bands of warriors, armed retinues—in the first case, Mindaugas’s, and in the second, Ruškavičius’s”ⁱ⁶⁹. Thus, historians have long known that Lietuva was, among other things, also the name of an armed retinue. The notices from Russian chronicles that we have identified, in which it is clear that Litva denotes a band of warriors, date from the mid-fourteenth century; the notices examined by H. Lowmiański concern events in Lithuania in the first half of the thirteenth century; Ukrainian folk-

¹⁶⁵ ЭСБМ 5, 87.

¹⁶⁶ Общая лексика германских и балто-славянских языков, 67; Даль В. Толковый словарь живого великорусского языка 4, Москва, 1982, 448.

¹⁶⁷ ПСРЛ 2, col. 776.

¹⁶⁸ ПСРЛ 2, col. 797.

¹⁶⁹ Lowmiański H. Studja nad początkami społeczeństwa i państwa litewskiego 2, 331.

84

The songs that mention Lithuania may date from approximately the 10th century. Thus, in the 10th–14th centuries, Lietuva (Litva) was also the name of a band of warriors, a retinue. The character of these fighting units also becomes clear: they consisted of the armed guards of individual princes or military leaders and, during military campaigns, their escorts. The fighting unit itself was also named after its prince or military leader: Karijotas’s *lietuvà, Jaunutis’s *lietuvà, Gerdenis’s *lietuvà, Ruškavičius’s *lietuvà, Mindaugas’s *lietuvà... These structural features of the principal fighting units of early Lithuanian society—the retinues called *lietuvos—must be borne in mind, as they are essential for understanding what follows.

Thus, 12th–14th-century Russian chronicles attest to the following meanings of the name Lithuania (Litva): 1) a territory (country, land), 2) the Lithuanians as a whole, as an ethnic group, and 3) a fighting unit, a retinue. It must be emphasized here that in Russian chronicles, when Lithuania is referred to as a retinue, the word litva actually functions as a collective common noun. As a collective common noun, the name litva in the sense of the Lithuanians as a whole, as an ethnic group, is also recorded in the oldest document in Eastern Europe, “The Tale of Bygone Years.” It has the same sense in present-day Belarusian and Russian dialects, where litvà functions like the plural-form names for Lithuanians litóvcy, litóvki, litóvcy. Therefore, in seeking an answer to the question of which of these three meanings of the name Lithuania is the oldest, original one, the territorial meaning (land, country) has the least claim to primacy. It seems to be the latest, derived from the name of the ethnic group: the territory inhabited by the Lithuanians was apparently named after them.

In this respect, the evidence of Lithuanian itself is no less important. Structurally, Lietuvà/Lietavà, as noted, belongs to the group of nouns with the suffix -uva/ava, which have a collective meaning. Consequently, litva = *lietuvà could not originally have denoted a place (territory). The structural-semantic features of Lithuanian imply that *lietuvà had the meaning of a group of people, a collective—in other words, a fighting unit, a retinue. But the available evidence does not yet allow us to say whether this meaning of Lietuva/Lietavà is older than the meaning “the Lithuanians as a whole, as an ethnic group,” or whether it is the original one. More evidence and additional arguments are needed.

In ancient Scandinavia, an armed escort, a retinue, was called by a word strongly resembling the name of our nation: Old Icelandic lið neuter “attendants, escort; warriors, army”¹⁷⁰, Icelandic lið neuter “group, troop, crowd; those accompanying, attendants; army; help, support”¹⁷¹, Norwegian lid (le, li) “ditto”¹⁷², Old Swedish lið neuter “those accompanying, attendants; army”¹⁷³. Some continental Germanic peoples, such as the Frisians, also had a retinue with this name; compare:

¹⁷⁰ B a e t k e W. Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur 1, Berlin, 1965, 380.

¹⁷¹ B ö ð v a r s s o n Á. Íslensk orðabók, Reykjavík, 1992, 580.

¹⁷² A a s e n I. Norsk ordbog med dansk forklaring, Kristiania, 1918, 443; topaties, Norsk riksmålsordbok 2, Bærum, 1991, 2972.

¹⁷³ D e V r i e s J. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Leiden, 1962, 354.

85

Old Frisian lið “group, escort”¹⁷⁴. This is an old Germanic neuter noun, derived from Indo-European *litóm (-om is the nominative-accusative singular ending). The relationship between the final consonants of Germanic *lid-am¹⁷⁵ and Indo-European *litóm is explained by Verner’s law: the relationship is exactly the same as, for example, that between Icelandic faðir “father,” Norwegian and Swedish fader, Old Frisian feder, and Indo-European *potér (Latin pater, Greek πατήρ, Old Indic pitár “father”).

The name for a retinue among other continental Germanic peoples, such as the Germans, is from the same root but has a different ablaut grade; compare Middle Low German leide, neuter, “escort that acknowledged the precedence of a traveler,” Modern German Ge-leite “accompaniment, armed escort, convoy”¹⁷⁶. Danish leide “agreement, pledge to protect,” Norwegian leide, and Swedish leid “guarantee of safety (for a ship, cargo, or person during wartime)” are considered borrowings from Middle Low German¹⁷⁷.

From a historical-comparative perspective, identifying these Germanic words with the ethnonym *Leitā (Lietuvà, Lietavà) presents no major difficulties. Formally, they differ only in the ablaut grades of the root: Old Icelandic lið < *lit-om: Middle Low German leide < *lait-: Lithuanian *Leitā, Lietuvà, Lietavà < *Leit-. Such root-vowel alternation occurs even among words in a single language; compare, for example, Lithuanian žãibas, dialectal žãibti (- sta) “to grow dim (of the eyes)”: dialectal žiẽbas “lightning,” žiẽbti (- ia) “to burn, kindle”: žibėti (žiba) “to glow, shine.” The Germanic words under discussion denote an armed escort on a road or campaign. The meaning of our nation’s name, “armed escort, band of warriors, retinue,” is well attested in Russian chronicles and, in part, in Ukrainian wedding songs. Thus, these Germanic and Baltic words have the same meaning. Consequently, from a historical-etymological point of view they are related words, descended from a single base, a verbal root meaning “to go, travel together, accompany,” well preserved in Germanic languages: Old High German līdan, Middle Low German līden “to go (through),” Old Saxon līthan “ditto,” Old English līþan “ditto,” Old Icelandic liða “to go, travel, ride,” Gothic leiþan “to go” (< Indo-European *leita-). The configuration of meanings is further clarified by causatives of this verb: Modern German leiten “to lead, direct,” English lead “ditto,” Norwegian leie “to lead by the hand or rein” (from lede), Danish lede “to lead, direct,” Old Icelandic leiða “to set in motion, set to work; lead, direct, govern; accompany” < Germanic *laideja¹⁷⁸. Among related lexemes in other Indo-European languages are Tocharian A lit-, let-, B lit-, lait- “to move away, withdraw, retreat; fall”¹⁷⁹, whose lit- may reflect Indo-European *leit- or

¹⁷⁴ Seebold E. Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörterbuch der germanischen starken Verben, The Hague-Paris, 1970, 329.

¹⁷⁵ Seebold E. Op. cit., 329.

¹⁷⁶ Kluge F. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache 21 Auflage, Berlin-New York, 1975, 433, 435.

¹⁷⁷ Nielsen N. Å. Dansk etymologisk ordbog 3. reviderede udgave, København, 1976, 227; Jóhannesson Å. Islandisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern, 1956, 736.

¹⁷⁸ De Vries J. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 350, 354; Seebold E. Op. cit., 328—330.

¹⁷⁹ De Vries J. Op. cit., 354; Pokorny J. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 672 (bet plg. 309); Magnússon Á. B. Islensk orðsiðjabók, Reykjavík, 1989, 560.

86

*lit-, o let-, lait- clearly continue Indo-European *loit-¹⁸⁰. It seems that Baltic languages also have representatives of this root. The Samogitian dialect verb litinti (-ina) ‘to tread with the feet, to trample’ is noteworthy; cf. Žąsus sulitino mano javus (‘the geese trampled my crops’—pressed down, crushed, trampled them into the ground) J. Jabl(Als) LKŽ VII 593. Minti also means ‘to go, to travel’; cf., for example, minti (mina, myné) ‘to tread, trample...; to go, walk’; German treten ‘to go, step; to tread on’; English tread ‘to go, step; to tread on, trample, tread’. Particularly significant is its cognate form liténti (-éna), used in reference to a road: Aš litenù keli, t.g. praminu J.; Kelis liténtas J. (‘I tread a road, i.e. make a path by treading; a road that has been trodden’). The prefixed form pra-liténti has only this meaning: ‘to make a path, to tread out a road’ LKŽ VII 588. For in Scandinavian languages, the meaning ‘road’ developed from the root *leit- ‘to go, travel together, accompany’; cf. Old Icelandic leið feminine ‘(sea) route, direction of a route; journey, voyage’ < *loitā. That litinti and liténti are not some reshaping of the synonym leténti (-éna) ‘to tread with the feet, trample, tread lightly’¹⁸¹ is evident, apparently because of their cognates in Latvian: lītut ‘to walk, step carefully’ ME II 475, àiz-lituôt ‘to run or dash off quickly and nimbly’ EH I 36.

As can be seen, these continuants of the Indo-European root *leit- ‘to go, travel together, accompany’ in the Baltic languages no longer retain the sense of going together or accompanying. Yet in living Lithuanian we find lexemes that have preserved this original meaning exactly, renewed it, and generated other meanings, apparently in a much later historical linguo-ethnocultural context, unmistakably showing that an armed escort, a band of warriors, a host is nothing other than those armed men who go and travel together on a campaign, accompany someone, and are thus companions and escorts. These are words from a parallel root with a different final consonant, namely *lei-d- (*lei-dh-), first and foremost one of the principal verbs in our language, lydėti (lydi, -ėjo) ‘to go or ride with someone who is departing as far as some place’; also the much rarer, but well-known dialectal verbs lyduoti (-uoja, -avo) ‘to accompany’ LKŽ VII 411 (s.v. 2 lyduoti), paléidėti (-ėja) ‘to accompany’ LKŽ VII 233, and léisti (-džia, -do) ‘to accompany (someone leaving)’ LKŽ VII 250—or, more precisely, that part of the polysemous verb léisti (-džia) that developed from *lei-d- (*lei-dh-) ‘to go, travel together, accompany’. Their derivatives are widely used in poetic Lithuanian: (pa)lydėjas, (pa)lydovas, lyd uonėlis, lydūnėlis ‘one who accompanies, an escort’; palýdas (palýdas) ‘companion’, palydninkas, palydūonis ‘ditto’ LKŽ VII 402, 410, IX 258–259. The fact that terminology relating to war and wedding customs is often connected and overlapping is further confirmed by derivatives of pa-lydėti: palýdas (palýdas) ‘a wedding guest accompanying the bridegroom or bride, an escort’, palydà ‘the bride’s or bridegroom’s companions at a wedding’, palydijà ‘ditto’ LKŽ VII 257–258¹⁸². Especially significant is the collective noun

180 Van Windekens A.J. Tocharian Compared with the Other Indo-European Languages 1, Louvain, 1976, 263.

181 As is sometimes assumed without justification, Fraenkel E. Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 360. On the semantic convergence of words with a similar phonetic form, see LKK 14, 1973, 147.

182 Palydis ‘armed escort, escort’ LKŽ VII 258 is known only from the writings of L. Ivinskis and should not be relied upon firmly.

87

The derivative paludā, with the collective ending *-ā, precisely repeats the derivational process that took place in such a remote epoch as can be reached only through linguistic analysis, when the name for a war-band, *leitā, was formed from the verbal root *leit- ‘to go, travel together, accompany’ with that same collective ending *-ā (< Indo-European *-aH).

The parallelism between the root allomorphs *lei-t- and *lei-d- under consideration also extends to the root accent: léit-, cf. Lietuvà, acc. Liẽtuvą, Latvian leitis ‘Lithuanian’ (but there is also a circumflex form, cf. Lietuvā, acc. Liẽtuvą, Latvian Lietava); léid-, cf. léisti (-džia) ‘to accompany’, Latvian laīsties ‘to travel, ride, go, or dash quickly’. The inherently long root vowel is reflected in Baltic languages with an acute accent, but this did not at all prevent lexemes with a short root vowel from arising: Lithuanian pralītėnti (-ēna) ‘to make a path or road, to tread out a path’, litinti (-ina) ‘to tread with the feet, to trample’, Latvian litūot ‘to walk, step carefully’, aiz-litūot ‘to run or dash off quickly and nimbly’ relate to léit- ‘to go, travel together, accompany’ in the same way that Latvian lidēt (-u, -ēju) ‘to fly, dash’, liduôt ‘to fly about’, lidināt (-āju) ‘to fly about (especially of a hawk)’ relate to laīsties (-žuôs) ‘to travel, ride, go, or dash quickly’.¹⁸³.

The difference between lexemes formed from these allomorphs apparently lay chiefly in their domain of use; they belonged to different speech (register) styles. The leit- lexemes seem not to have belonged to everyday vocabulary; they were military terms. The elevated, prestigious connotation of military terminology, and a certain sacredness, apparently explain why most common words with leit- have not survived to our day.

Detailed linguistic analysis shows that the etymon of *Léitā (Lietuvà, Lietuvā)—that is, its true meaning as established by derivation from the root—was ‘a troop, a company of soldiers’. That *Léitā (Lietuvà, Lietavā) was originally the name of a troop or war-band is shown not only by Germanic cognates identified through etymology, but also by words in Lithuanian itself. We can now answer the question of which meaning of the name Lithuania is primary: the Lithuanian people as an ethnic group, or a particular social group. The name for the Lithuanian people as an ethnos was given by the name of the war-band. The existence in ancient Lithuanian society of war-bands called *léitā, *lietuvā (= Slavic litva), *lietavā should be regarded as a fact attested by cultural, historical, and linguistic evidence.

It is possible that, as A. Salys surmised, the suffixes -uvā/-avā were added later, when the collective meaning of *léitā began to fade as the word entered the feminine noun class, making it necessary to reinforce that meaning. Thus the original form was *léitā ‘warriors, escort, war-band’. On the basis of evidence from Old Indian, Greek, and, in part, Germanic, it is thought that in Proto-Indo-European collective forms in *-ā (< *-aH) were used as plural forms of neuter o-stem nouns. Moreover, the collective forms were distinguished from the singular forms by their accentuation¹⁸⁴. Therefore

183 K. Mūlenbacha Latv iešu valodas vārdnīca. Edited, supplemented, and continued by J. Endzelīns, Rīgā, 1925—1927, 413, 466.

184 Illich-Svitych V. M. Nominal Accentuation in Baltic and Slavic, Moscow, 1963, 53—55.

88

*leitä”warriors, retinue, warband” can be treated as the plural form of Germanic *litóm“retinue, warriors, army” (> Old Church Slavonic lĭd neut.). Their accentual relationship would be the same as, for example, Sanskrit cakrám neut. “wheel of a chariot” and xúxla pl. “wheels.” The grades of root-vowel alternation depended on the position of the accent and were therefore regularly distributed: the stressed root morpheme had the full grade (leit-), while the unstressed one had the zero grade (lit-).

In other words, the ancient Lithuanians and Germanic peoples used the same word for a warband. Moreover, in both societies the warband was named after its leader. We have already mentioned that in Lithuania in the 13th–14th centuries, the name of a prince or military leader was also used for the fighting force itself: Karijotas’ *lietuva (=litva), i.e. a warband; Jaunutis’ *lietuva, Gerdenis’ *lietuva, Mindaugas’ *lietuva... A similar picture is found in ancient Scandinavia. There were many warbands, so to distinguish them, the leader’s name was added to lĭð, for example, in runic inscriptions i liÞi kuÞuis “in Guðvēr’s warband” and i liÞi frekis “in Frøygæir’s warband” (the inscriptions mean “died while serving in the warband of such-and-such a leader”)¹⁸⁵.

In addition to a retinue or group of warriors, the ancient Scandinavian lĭð also denoted the people of a ruler’s court, servants, and household members. The sagas also have a word for an individual member of a retinue: lĭða masc. “one who belongs to a retinue, a retainer”¹⁸⁶. It was similar in ancient Lithuanian society. *Léitä and its derivative *leitįai denoted an armed retinue, its members, and warriors. But the same word, *leitįai (> leičiai), was also used for men who looked after horses, as well as other assistants and servants. This is clearly reflected in Lithuanian words that entered Belarusian; compare лейть, лейть “menial court servant.” This also makes clear that the name leičiai (лейти, лейтеове) for the ruler’s horse keepers, recorded in 15th–16th-century legal documents, belongs etymologically to the word family of the root *leit- “to go, travel together, accompany” examined here.

Lithuanian *léitä “retinue, group of warriors, army,” *leituvā “ditto,” = Old Russian литва “warband,” *leitavā “retinue, warriors, army,” with the suffixes -uvā/- avā added later, and Old Icelandic lĭð “companions, retinue; warriors, army,” Old Frisian līd “group, retinue,” < Indo-European *litóm, Middle Low German leide “retinue that acknowledged the superiority of the traveler,” Modern German Ge-leite “escort, armed guard, convoy,” < Indo-European *lait- are, historically speaking, cognate words with a common root and constitute an exclusive lexical isogloss of the Baltic and Germanic languages. These are words from the terminology of warfare. It should be noted here that Baltic and Germanic are also linked by other words denoting matters of war, which correspond exactly not only in meaning but also in stem. Examples include the names for war and army: Lithuanian kārias “war; army; group, regiment,” kāris “army, army regiment, garrison, camp; war” (used in old Lithuanian writings), Latvian karš “war; army,” Old Prussian kargis “army” (attested as kragis Elb. 410; the letter g apparently denotes the consonant j) < *karja- (cf. caria-woytis “inspection of the army”) and Old High German heri (now Heer “army”), Old…

¹⁸⁵ R u p r e c h t A. Die ausgehende Wikingerzeit im Lichte der Runenin- schriften, Göttingen, 1958, 62—66.

¹⁸⁶ B a e t k e W. Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Pros literatura 1, 380, 382.

89

saksų heri, s. isl. herr masc. ”kariuomenė; būrys, liaudis”, runų danų harja, runų švedų harija, got. harjis ”kariuomenė” < germ. *harja- < ide. *korio-. Baltų ir germanų kalbų sutapimas ir šiuo atveju stebinantis, nors tai ir nėra išskliuzhyvinė izoglosa. Mat jo kamieno žodis paliudytas taip pat keltų ir graikų kalbose: vid. airių cuire masc. ”būrys, pulkas”, galų corio- ”karys; kariuomenė, gr. χοίρανος ”karo vadas” < *χορία-. O kamieno liet. kāras ”ginkluotas susidūrimas, mūšis, mūšio laukas; kariuomenė (F. Nesselmanno ir F. Kuršaičio žodynuose)” ir s. persų kāra- ”kariuomenė” su pailgintu šaknies vokalizmu, be to, baltų kalbas jungia su iranėnų kalbomis¹⁸⁷. Šių ide. žodžių grupės etimonas nežinomas. V. Mažiulis iškėlė dėmesio vertą mintį, kad balt. *kaȓia- pirminė reikšmė buvo ”karių būrio žygis”¹⁸⁸. Pirmiausia tai rodytų dideliu archaiškumu pasižymintys prūsų kalbos duomenys, būtent karyago ”karo žygis (reise)”, priesagos -aga vadinys iš balt. *kaȓia-. Jeigu taip, etimoną nagrinėjamų žodžių grupei nesunku rasti pačioje lietuvių kalboje — tai veiksmažodis kárti (kãria, kórė) ”keliauti ten ir atgal, pakartotinai eiti, važiuoti” LKŽ V 338, plačiai vartojamas aukštaičių tarmėse, bet nesvetimas nė žemaičiams. Tik šiame kontekste paaiškėja lat. karš ”karas; kariuomenė” loc. sing. formos karā prasme mišlingame pasakyme Kurt (= kur tad) kaŋā tik ātri atnāca! nustebimą reiškiančiame ”Kaip anksti atėjote!” EH I 590. Tad ir šių karo terminų atsiradimas taip pat būtų pagrįstas tuo pačiu semiotiniu onomasiologiniu procesu (ide. šaknis *kor(H)- ”(pakartotinai) eiti, vykti, keliauti”), ir semantinis paralelizmas tarp *leit- žodžių ir *kor(H)- žodžių baltų ir germanų kalbose būtų akivaizdus. Tas paralelizmas — ir tai be galo svarbu! — pasirodo, siekia gilesnius šiaurės vakarų indoeuropiečių mentaliteto ir kalbos klodus.

One Germanic tribe (or clan) took its name from Germanic *harja- “warriors, army”: Tacitus’ Harii, Pliny’s Charini¹⁸⁹. Celtic *korjo- “group of warriors, army” likewise forms part of the names of two Celtic tribes: Tricorii, Petrucorii, that is, three and four regiments of warriors¹⁹⁰. In fact, these are not names of military organizations but of tribes—as ethnoses—because in the society of that era (the first centuries AD) military power had not yet become distinct from tribal organization¹⁹¹. It is therefore understandable that the name for a group of warriors also served as the name for an entire tribe or a closely related group of tribes—a clan. Processes of this kind and their dynamics were also characteristic of the northwestern Indo-Europeans living farther east, the Balts; the only difference was that these ethno-onomasiological processes were encoded by a different, though synonymous, root-

¹⁸⁷ Pokorny J. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 615—616; De Vries J. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 224—225; Fraenkel E. Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 220; Mažiulis V. Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas 2, Vilnius, 1993, 119—121; Топоров В. Н. Прусский язык. Словарь (I—K), Москва, 1980, 221.

¹⁸⁸ Mažiulis V., Op. cit., 120.

¹⁸⁹ Much R. Harii. — Reallexicon der germanischen Altertumskunde, hrsg. von J. Hoops 2, Strassburg, 1913—1915, 450.

¹⁹⁰ De Vries J. Op. cit., 224.

¹⁹¹ Łowmiański H. Początki Polski 1, 236.

90

mi *leit- “to go, travel together, accompany,” and, as their result, collective common nouns *lėita (*leituva, *leitavā), “retinue, troop of soldiers, army,” became a tribal name *léita (*leituva, *leitavā) “Lithuanians”; cf. the Lithuanian Chronicle of Nestor’s литъва “Lithuanians”.

THE ORIGIN OF LITHUANIA’S NAME

Summary

In attempting to find out the derivation and the primitive meaning of Lietuvà ”Lithuania” two facts to be considered are fundamental. First, in old Russian chronicles Litva (= Lietuvà, cf. Litòva in Nestor’s chronicle) often stands for duke’s or military leader’s retinue, escort of soldiers (družina). Second, similar words in similar meanings are found in the Scandinavian and some other Germanic languages: Icel. lið ”attendants, retinue; army”, Old Friesian lid ”troop, retinue”, Middle Low German leide ”attendants, retinue, suite”. From a linguistic point of view, these Germanic words and Lith. Lietuvà seem to be cognates.

Originally *leituva/*leitavā/*léita ”(duke’s, nobleman’s or military leader’s) suite, retinue, bodyguard” might have represented a class of collective nouns with the suffix -uva/-ava, well attested in contemporary Lithuanian, cf. bernavà ”company of young men”, brolavà, brólūvà ”all brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands as well as their children” etc.

91