In a Word

President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has given an unexpected fillip to a previously little-known online campaign called “KyivNotKiev”, the goal of which  is to persuade English-language users to refer to the Ukrainian capital as Kyiv (derived from the Ukrainian word Київ) instead of Kiev (from the Russian language version, Киев). The campaign is part of a broader move by the Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs to shed the relics of Russian and Soviet domination and assert a native Ukrainian linguistic identity.

English-speaking visitors to Slavic countries often struggle with the subtleties of spelling and pronunciation, but having an historical appreciation sometimes alleviates cultural confusion. But that might be difficult to achieve in this case. Both Russian and Ukrainian developed – along with Belarussian (with which modern Ukrainian still shares some linguistic congruity) – from Old East Slavic, a language used from at least the late 9th century in Kievan Rus. Or perhaps we might now write “Kyivan Rus”. It should be said that both the name and origin of this early-medieval state remain matters of debate among historians. 

The linguistic divergence and development of these languages has also been subject to much – often politicised – dispute, but suffice to say that from around the late twelfth century different regional variations of Russian and a separate Ukrainian language became distinguishable. But modern Russian, Belarussian and Ukrainian all preserve much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary.

Ukrainians are also lobbying to end the common usage of the definite article “the” before the name of their country, something they believe gives the suggestion that it is just a region, playing into Putin’s hands. In a world where personal pronoun choices are all the rage, giving an entire nation a say in their linguistic identity shouldn’t cause us too many complications. Apart from those that are purely culinary, of course. Restaurants from Toronto to New York, from Dublin to Sydney, are clearly going to need their crumbed-poultry-dish menus updated. Chicken Kyiv, anyone?