Names of Poland

The full official name of the Polish state is Rzeczpospolita Polska which translates to "Republic of Poland". The word rzeczpospolita has been used in Poland since at least the 16th century. Originally it was a generic term used to denote any state with a republican or similar form of government. Today, however, the word is used almost solely in reference to the Polish State. Any other republic is referred to as republika in modern Polish.

It is often assumed that all of the above names derive from the name of the Polans (Polanie), a West Slavic tribe which inhabited the territories of present-day Poland in the 9th–10th centuries. The origin of the name Polanie is theorized to be descendend ultimately from Proto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European. It may derive from the word pole, Polish for "field".[4]

Many ancient tribes in Europe derived their names from the nature of the land they inhabited. Gervase of Tilbury wrote in his Otia imperialia ("Recreation for an Emperor", 1211): Inter Alpes Huniae et Oceanum est Polonia, sic dicta in eorum idiomate quasi Campania.(translation: "Between the Hunnic Alps and the Ocean there is Poland, thus called "Countryside" in their idiom.") Polans may have used Polska to describe their own territory in the Warta River basin. During the 10th century, they managed to subdue and unite the Slavic tribes between the rivers Oder and Bug into a single feudal state and in the early 11th century, the name Polska was extended to the entire ethnically Polish territory. The lands originally inhabited by the Polans became known as Staropolska, or "Old Poland", and later as Wielkopolska, or "Greater Poland", while the lands conquered towards the end of the 10th century, home of the Vistulans (Wiślanie) and the Lendians, became known as Małopolska, or "Lesser Poland."

In Polish literature, Poland is sometimes referred to as Lechia, derived from Lech, the legendary founder of Poland. In the 17th–18th centuries, Sarmaci ("Sarmatians") was a popular name by which Polish nobles referred to themselves (see Sarmatism).

The earliest recorded mention of "Poland" is found in a Latin text written in 1003 and titled "Annales Hildesheimenses": "Heinricus Berthaldi comitis filius, et Bruno frater regis, et ambo Bolizavones, Polianicus vide licet ac Boemicus, a rege infideliter maiestatis rei deficient." In English: Henry, son of Berthold, and Bruno, brother of the king, and both Boleslaws, Polish and Czech, left the circle of friends of the Emperor.[5]

Exonyms for Poland in Slavic languages. The West Slavic languages such as Czech and Slovak bear particular resemblance to the Polish endonym:

• Kashubian Pòlskô
• Czech Polsko
• Slovak Poľsko
• Serbo-Croatian: Пољска / Poljska
• Slovene Poljska
• Belarusian Польшча, Pol'shcha
• Ukrainian Польща, Pol'shcha
• Russian Польша, Pol'sha
• Bulgarian Полша, Polsha
• Macedonian Полска, Polska

Non-Germanic languages which borrowed their word for Poland from Slavic include:

• Abkhaz Польша, Ṗol’ša
• Azerbaijani, Gagauz Polşa
• Bashkir, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Turkmen Польша, Polşa
• North Korean standard language 뽈스까 Ppolsŭkka
• Uzbek Польша, Polsha

In Latin, which was the principal written language of the Middle Ages, the exonym for Poland became Polonia. It later became the basis for Poland's name in all Romance languages:

• Catalan Polònia
• Occitan Polonha
• French Pologne
• Italian, Galician, Romanian, Spanish Polonia
• Portuguese Polónia (European) / Polônia (Brazilian)

Many other languages (e.g. Albanian Polonia; Arabic بولونيا Būlūniyā; Greek Πολωνία, Polōnía; Maltese Polonja) use a variation of the Latin name.

Germans, Poland's western neighbors, called it Polen. Other Germanic languages use related exonyms:

• Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian Polen
• English Poland
• Icelandic, Faroese Pólland
• Yiddish פּױלן‎, Poyln

Non-Germanic languages which borrowed their word for Poland from Germanic include:

• Arabic بولندا, Būlandā
• Esperanto Pollando, Polio / Polujo
• Hebrew פּוֹלִין‎, Polín (Older pronunciation: פּוֹלִין‎ Pólin and פּוֹלַנְיָה‎ Polánia)
• Indonesian Polandia
• Irish An Pholainn
• Japanese ポーランド, Pōrando
• Chinese 波兰 (simplified) or 波蘭 (traditional), Bōlán
• South Korean standard language 폴란드, Pollandeu
• Vietnamese Ba Lan (Ba Lan)

The Lendians, a Proto-Polish tribe who lived around the confluence of the rivers Vistula and San (south-eastern Poland), are the source of another exonym. The tribe's name likely comes from the Proto-Polish word lęda, or "scorched land".[3] Their name was borrowed to refer to Poland mainly by peoples who lived east or south of Poland:

• лях (lyakh) is used in East Slavic languages. It also appears in Polish literature as Lachy, a synonym for "Poles" and "Poland" used by East Slavic characters. Podlasie, a Polish region on the Belarusian border, derives its name from the same root. Lachy Sądeckie is the name of a small cultural group around Nowy Sącz in southern Lesser Poland.
• Lithuanian Lenkija
• Hungarian Lengyelország
• Georgian პოლონეთი, Poloneti
• Persian لهستان, Lahestān. The word combines Lah with a common Persian suffix -stān, which means "The land of".
• Turkish Lehistan, a borrowing from Persian. It is now considered obsolete and replaced by Polonya.[10]
• Armenian Լեհաստան, Lehastan was also borrowed from Persian.