Poland, its Names and those of its People

• Poland, Polska, Polanie
• Wielkopolska and Małopolska
• Polonia, Polonians
• Lechia, Lechistan, Lechici

  Origins and definition of the terms: Poland. Polska, Polanie

  Poland's name, Polska, is derived from the word Polanie or "people of the fields," the name of tribe that used to inhabit the area around Grodno and Poznań where the Polish state first arose. In time, this area and the surrounding region acquired the name Wielkopolska.
  
  The country's official name is: Rzeczpospolita Polska. In English, this name is usually rendered as the Republic of Poland. Rzeczpospolita is a literal translation of the Latin term Res Publica in its meaning of a "public thing." In the Polish context, this is a term that applies to the state in which those who govern are chosen (elected) by its citizens for a specified period of time. It also corresponds to the English term: "Commonwealth."
  
  More specifically, the current Polish state is referred to as III Rzeczpospolita, or Third Republic. This to distinguish it from the Royal Republic whose kings were elected for life from the 16th century on. The elections were by the vote of the nobility, or szlachta, which constituted some 15% of the population.
  
  Following the 1569 Act of Union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the resulting federal state was referred to Rzeczpospolita obu Narodów which is rendered in English as the "Commonwealth of Both Nations." The two entities of the federation were referred to as Korona and Wielkie Księstwo, that is "The Crown" and "The Grand Duchy," respectively.
  
  At a time when elsewhere monarchs ascended the throne through the right of royal dynastic succession or force of arms, absolutist monarchs in the lands adjoining Poland viewed the election of the monarch of the Commonwealth as an alarming exercise in democracy. It was thus that the existance of Commonwealth was terminated by its being partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1795.
  
  After 123 years, the nation regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I. The state that existed from 1918 until the German-Soviet invasion of 1939 is referred to as II Rzeczpospolita or the Second Republic. It boasted universal suffrage, thus the right to vote was gained by Polish women two years ahead of its extension to their American sisters and ten years before their British sisters were granted that right fully.
  
  Although after WWII Poland nominally regained its independence, the form of government imposed on it by the Soviets was on the Soviet model. It went under the name the Polish People's Republic. The Round Table Negotiations of 1989, which led to partially free elections, the installation of non-communist government, and the return of full democracy, are viewed as the beginning of the Third Republic.
  
  

  Origins and definition of the terms: Wielkopolska and Małopolska

  Wielkopolska and Małopolska, the names of two of Poland's ancient regions, are often rendered into English as Great or Greater Poland and Little or Lesser Poland, respectively. Given that the Polish adverbs wielka and mała stand for great and small respectively, this is not surprising. Such renditions are however misleading, both in terms of the respective size of the territories under discussion and on etymological grounds. Małopolska, as shown on current maps of the country's regions posted by Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Fig. 1), is some 40% larger than Wielkopolska. Etymologically, the names derive from the Latin terms Polonia Maior and Polonia Minor, so named to indicate the first of the two names to be chronologically older (analogously, for instance, to England and New England). Thus the term Małopolska can be better understood as Younger Poland, younger than Wielkopolska, where the Polish state first arose. In summary, it might be better to use the Polish names of the regions as they are rather than seeking to render them into English.
  
  The use of Polonia Maior dates back at least to 1242 when Bolesław and Przemysław I used the title Duces Majoris Poloniae. Since at the time all documents were written in Latin, it is unclear when the terms Wielkopolska and Małopolska entered the vernacular. Written documents bearing these terms first appeared in the 15th century.
  
  Click on maps for enlargement
  

  Fig.1  Major Regions towns, rivers 610 x 560 pixels - 87k original source: http://www.msz.gov.pl/mszpromo/en/3_1.htm	Fig. 2  Voivodships powiats, towns, rivers 600 x 575 pixels - 99k original source: http://www.kprm.gov.pl/english/pl.html	Fig. 3  Partition of Poland by King Bolesław Krzywousty in 1189 391 x 498 pixels - 26k Source: Atlas Historyczny dla szkoł średnich PPWK, Kraków, 2001

  
  
  Application of these terms retroactively in historical maps, tends to confuse the issue. Thus, a map in a current high school historical atlas published in Poland (Fig. 3) that shows how King Bolesław Krzywousty (Wrymouth) parceled his kingdom between his five sons shortly before his death in 1138, uses both terms Wielkopolska and Małopolska. Note that even then, the area designated on the map as Małopolska is 45% greater than that corresponding to Wielkopolska
  
  Also, potentially confusing is the fact that, in the administrative reorganization of Poland into 16 voivodships or provinces in 1999, the terms Wielkopolska and Małopolska were used to name two of the 16 voivodships (Fig. 2).
  
  

  Origins and definition of the terms: Polonia, Polonians

  Click on maps for enlargement Geographic distribution of the Polonia in the United States Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Polonia_USA.png

  Polonia is the Latin name for Poland. As such it has survived as the name of the nation in several of the Romance language, thus Italian, Portugese, Romanian and Spanish. In Polish, and by extension in English and French, the term applies, however, to the Polish diaspora, that is, to Poles and individuals of Polish ancestry living outside the borders of the country.
  
  The country's history of partitions, occupations, insurrections, and uprisings over the last couple of centuries have generated several waves of very substantial emigrations both political and economic. In addition, deportations, and frontier shifts have also substantially contributed to population shifts beyond the frontiers of the country.
  
  Among the oldest (dating to the latter half of the 19th century) and most numerous are the Polonias of the United States (some 10 million) and Brazil (0.6 to 1.6 million). One of the most recent is the 150,000 strong Polonia in Ireland, a country which opened its borders to Poles following the accession of Poland to the European Union in 2004. Overall, the size of the diaspora is estimated to be approximately equivalent to half of Poland's current population of 38.5 million.
  
  

  Origins and definition of the terms: Lechia, Lechistan, Lechici

  Pennant of Gdańsk's Lechia Sports Club

  Lechia is an old Latin name for the Polish nation which continues to be used in Poland currently in the naming of sports clubs, student fraternities, commercial enterprises, etc. Derivatives or versions of it remain the name for Poland in a number of foreign languages, most notably in the Turkish and Persian term Lechistan where -stan is derived from the Sanskrit term for "place", a term that survives in the Polish word for "state".
  
  Poland and Ottoman Turkey shared a common frontier for three or more centuries and though the two nations fought a number of wars with each other, they also had significant cultural interactions. The lasting effects of these were emphasized in a speech given at an International Academic Conference in April 2002 by Leszek Miller, then Poland's Prime Minister:

  "For over one hundred years our country was erased from the map of Europe. It was partitioned between the closest neighbours. Recent friends and allies. Three powers of that time, deriving their own roots from the same culture, the same Christian civilization. The only neighbouring country, which never accepted the partitions of Poland, was the Ottoman Empire. The greatest Islamic country, which bordered on the historical Polish Commonwealth Republic for three centuries long, and on which our country has repetitively but reluctantly fought with military arms. One of the partitioning powers turned out to be Austria, which earlier had been defended and saved from the overwhelming Turkish invasion in 1683 by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski. The battle of Vienna is the subject of teaching for every single Polish child. But it also remembers that still two hundred years after that battle, it was at the Moslem Istanbul, at the Topkapi palace, that each year the Sultan was officially informed that the "The legate of Lechistan has not yet arrived", demonstrating in this way the refusal to recognize Poland's deprivation of its sovereignty."

  Norman Davis told much the same anecdote in his "Heart of Europe" (1984):

  "Throughout the nineteenth century at the gatherings of the Diplomatic Corps of the Sublime Porte [the Ottoman empire], the Ottoman chef de protocol would call on His Excellency, the Ambassador of Lechistan [as Poland was known to Turks], to step forward, and an aide would announce his regrets for the ambassador's temporary indisposition."

  Another Lechistan echo from the past, this time via Uzbekistan, is to be found in a legend the more recent aspect of which dates from 1942 when a Polish Army was being formed in the southern regions of the Soviet Union. According to the legend, the Poles were surprised to discover that the Uzbek inhabitants of Samarkand had a memory of Lechistan that stretched back to the early middle ages.
  
  The origins of the Lechia related names remain uncertain. It is thought, however, to derive from the name of the Lechitae tribe, so called in its Latinzed form, the eastermost of the Western Slavs whose territory approximated that of southeastern Poland, i.e. the voivodship of Podkarpacie centered on the town of Przemyśl. Variants found in other languages include Lechoi in Greek, Lenkas in Lithuanian, Lechas in Rus', and Lengyel in Hungarian.
  
  Every Polish child knows the Legend of the Three Brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' who were exploring lands where to settle their peoples. As they approached an oak grove, Lech saw a white eagle nest in one of the trees. Taking this as an omen he decided that he and his had found the place they were looking for, while Czech and Rus' continued on their way.
  
  Every Polish child knows the Legend of the Three Brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' who were exploring lands where to settle their peoples. As they approached an oak grove, Lech saw a white eagle nest in one of the trees. Taking this as an omen he decided that he and his had found the place they were looking for, while Czech and Rus' continued on their way.
  
  Not surprisingly, Lech, and it diminutive Leszek, are commonly encountered first names in Poland, best known in the rest of the world because of Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Solidarity, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the first elected President of the Third Republic.