Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia

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Originally, the name Rus' (Cyrillic: Русь) referred to the people,^[1] regions, and medieval principalities (9th to 12th centuries) within the territory of the Kievan Rus'. Today its territory is distributed among Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Poland, and the European section of Russia. The term Россия (Rossiya), comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Rus', Ρωσσία Rossía—related to both Modern Greek: Ρως, romanized: Ros, lit. 'Rus'', and Ρωσία (Rosía, "Russia", pronounced [roˈsia]).

One of the earliest written sources mentioning the people called Rus' (as Rhos) dates to 839 in the Annales Bertiniani. This chronicle identifies them as a Germanic tribe called the Swedes. According to the Kievan Rus' Primary Chronicle, compiled in about 1113, the Rus' were a group of Varangians, Norsemen who had relocated somewhere "from beyond the sea" (by modern interpretations, from Scandinavia), first to the Novgorod Land, then to the south where they created the medieval Kievan state.^[2] In the 11th century, the dominant term in the Latin tradition was Ruscia. It was used, among others, by Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Cosmas of Prague and Pope Gregory VII in his letter to Izyaslav I. Rucia, Ruzzia, Ruzsia were alternative spellings. During the 12th century, Ruscia gradually made way for two other Latin terms, "Russia" and "Ruthenia". "Russia" (also spelled Rossia and Russie) was the dominant Romance-language form, first used by Liutprand of Cremona in the 960s and then by Peter Damian in the 1030s. It became ubiquitous in English and French documents in the 12th century. Ruthenia, first documented in the early 12th century Augsburg annals, was a Latin form preferred by the Apostolic Chancery of the Latin Church.

The modern Russian endonym of Россия, Rossiya, which came into use in the 15th century,^[3][4][5] is derived from the Greek Ρωσία, which in turn derives from Ῥῶς, the self-name of the people of Rus'.^[6]

A hypothetical predecessor of Kievan Rus' is the 9th-century Rus' Khaganate, whose name was introduced by modern researchers who hypothesised its existence basing on a small number of early medieval Byzantine and Persian and Arabic sources that mention Rus'.^[7]