While a Computer Science graduate student, I became a fan of computer languages – everything from the rudimentary assembly languages of mini- and micro-computers to symbolic languages that allowed one to write mathematical expressions, perform simulations, reason (after a fashion) and so forth. I had grown up bilingual, and my physician uncle turned my brother and me on to Esperanto when we were in grade school. Later, in High School and University, I studied German. After retiring, Susan and I studied Italian.
I am not fluent in Esperanto, German or Italian, but each language has a special place in my heart. The same is true of computer languages; I do not know JAVA, Python, C++ or any of the modern languages that make our electronic gadgets work. Alas; I am hopelessly out of date now. Nonetheless, I look at words in different languages and try to understand their underlying linguistic structures.
Take Mayan, for example. The suffix -tenango means “place of.” Huehuetenango is the Place of the Ancients (huehue is Mayan for the very old). There are many Guatemalan cities that have names that end with that suffix. In Central and South Asia there are many countries whose names end in -stan. Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan are the examples that most readily come to mind. The suffix -stan means “Land of.” Both the Mayan and Persian suffixes express the idea of “home.”
So, you will not be surprised that I have been wondering about the names of Ukrainian cities – Kyiv, Lviv, Karkiv and Chuhuiv have been in the news recently. So, what is with the “-iv?” The best that I can posit, given my total ignorance of Slavic languages, is that it means “city.” Lviv, for instance was named after King Daniel of Ruthenia’s eldest son Lev (Leo). So. Lviv is the City of Lion(s). If Ruthenia sounds vaguely familiar it may be because you remember the Periodic Chart of the elements, Ruthenium is a Platinum group element that resists reaction with other elements; it’s rather like gold in that respect. Ruthenium was named by its Russian discoverer in honor of Ruthenia – the ancient name of the home of the Rus – the Russians of the 5th Century who actually ruled the land where modern Ukraine is. Lviv, the City of Lev the Lion, was the capital of Ruthenia – home of the Rus.
So, it is more than a little ironic that Putin claims Ukraine to be part of Russia when, in fact, it was originally Lviv that was the capital of Russia. That’s the way it is when the imaginary lines that separate one population from another (“This is my shit; that over there is your shit.”) shift across the centuries and even decades. It’s also more than a little ironic that Poland, centuries back, took Lviv and made it part of Poland. Lviv ultimately freed itself from Polonization and Catholicism. Later, when then Poland itself was invaded, Lviv and Ukraine welcomed refugees from Poland and later from Armenia. I suppose that today “the shoe is on the other foot,” as it were.
After all this time, and despite my advancing decrepitude, I still love language. If you have a more erudite take on the “-iv” suffix, please let me know.