User:W.andrea/sandbox/Names of Georgia

Names of Georgia § Gruziya

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Gruziya

The Russian exonym Грузия, Gruziya (['gruzʲɪjə]) is also of Persian origin, from Persian گرجستان, Gorjestân (Turkish: Gürcistan, Ossetian: Гуырдзыстон Gwyrdzyston, Mongolian Гүрж Gürj.)

The Russian name first occurs in the travel records of Ignatiy Smolnyanin as gurzi (гурзи) (1389).

“ А въ церковь ту влѣзщи, ино направѣ Гурзійскаа служба, Гурзіи служатъ.
There is a church and there is a Gurz [i.e. Georgian] liturgy, Gurzis [i.e. Georgians] serve there.
- Travels in Jerusalem ”

Afanasy Nikitin calls Georgia as gurzynskaya zemlya (Гурзыньская земля, "Gurzin land") (1466–72).

“ Да Севастѣи губѣ, да Гурзынской земли добро обилію всѣм; да Торская земля обилна.
And in Sevastia, and in the Gurzin land [i.e. Georgian land] everything is in abundance, and Torsk land [i.e. Turkish land] is abundant.
- A Journey Beyond the Three Seas ”

As a result of permutation of sounds "Gurz" transformed into "Gruz" and eventually "Gruz-iya". The Russian name was brought into several Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian) as well as other languages historically in contact with the Russian Empire and/or the Soviet Union (such as Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Hungarian, Yiddish, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Uyghur, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese).

Abandoning the name

In August 2005, the Georgian ambassador to Israel Lasha Zhvania asked that the Hebrew speakers refer to his country as "Georgia" גאורגיה‎ and abandon the name "Gruzia". The name entered the contemporary Hebrew as גרוזיה‎ ("Gruz-ia"). It coexisted with the names גאורגיה‎ ("Gheorghia" with two hard g's) and גורג'יה‎ (Gurjia), when "Gruzia" took over in the 1970s, probably due to a massive immigration of bilingual Georgian-Russian Jews to Israel at that time. Georgia's request was approved and now Israel refers to the country as Gheorghia.

In June 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia said South Korea had agreed to refer to the country as “조지아” (Jojia) instead of the Russian-influenced “그루지야” (Geurujiya) and the government of Georgia was continuing talks with other countries on the issue.

In April 2015, Japan changed the official Japanese name for Georgia from "Gurujia" (グルジア), which derives from the Russian term "Gruziya", to "Jōjia" (ジョージア), which derives from the English term "Georgia".

In May 2018, Lithuania switched to "Sakartvelas" that is derived from Georgia's original native name "Sakartvelo". The new name would be an alternative for Georgia alongside the long-established "Gruzija". Georgia had initially asked for a change in December 2009 to be called "Georgija" instead of "Gruzija", when request was forwarded to the Commission of the Lithuanian Language and being declined at that time. In 2010, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Grigol Vashadze during his official visit to Lithuania promised to "destroy the name Gruziya" and asked the Lithuanian authorities for a name switch. Lithuanian authorities made the switch for Independence Day of Georgia and described it as a "great gift to the Georgian people" when Georgia celebrated the 100th anniversary of the declaration of independence of the First Republic of Georgia. As a gesture of appreciation, Georgia also changed Lithuania's Russian-derived name of "Litva" (Russian: Литва) to its native "Lietuva". Accordingly, the Embassy of Georgia in Lithuania changed its name from "Gruzijos Ambasada" to "Sakartvelo Ambasada". However, as of 2019, the traditional name "Gruzija" was still more popular than the new name in media and on social networks. On December 21, 2020, the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language (VLKK) decided that the name "Sakartvelas" should be used in all official Lithuanian-language documents.

In June 2019, during the 2019 Georgian protests, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko called upon the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to change "Gruziya" for "Sakartvelo".

References