Bukovina

Bukovina is the territory on the slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains. It comprises a historic province now split between Romania and Ukraine.

Name

The original name of the region in Romanian during the rule of the Principality of Moldova was "?ara de Sus" (Upper Country), refering as opposed to the lower plains called "?ara de Jos" (Lower Country).

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The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation to the Austrian Habsburg possessions, later known as the Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary. The name has a Slavic origin and is derived from the word for beech tree; the German equivalent, das Buchenland, mostly used in poetry, means, literally, "beech land", or, more poetically, "land of beech trees". Its pronounced and written similarly in several European languages, Romanian: Bucovina; {{lang-ua|????????, Bukovyna}}; German: das Buchenland or die Bukowina, etc.

Related Topics:
1775 - Habsburg - Austrian Empire - Austria-Hungary - Slavic - Beech - German - Romanian

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The standard German name, die Bukowina, which was the official German-language name for the province under Austrian rule, is derived from the Slavic original, via the Polish form of the name which is exactly the same. This was due to the fact that, for roughly the first half of the 19th century, and for some years prior, Austrian Bukovina was adminstered as an integral part of neighbouring Galicia, whose internal government was, by active Austrian policy, controlled by Polish bureaucrats and nobles (szlachta) who had also traditionally formed the ruling class in that territory before the Habsburg acquired it for Austria under the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the last quarter of the 18th century. In English, an alternate name is The Bukovina, increasingly an archaism, which, however, is to be found in older literature,

Related Topics:
Polish - 19th century - Galicia - Szlachta - Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - 18th century

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One explanation for the reason why this part of Moldavia was referred to as Bukovina unofficially even before the Habsburgs wrested it from the Russians, as the price for their continued neutrality in a dispute between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, was due the region's having been the site of an ancient battle between the Hungarians and the Moldavian Romanians.

Related Topics:
Moldavia - Ottoman Empire - Russia

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On the field of battle littered with the corpses of the fallen, a forest of beech trees grew up, nourished by the blood of both sides - admittedly a rather gruesome, poetical, and, likely apocryphal, image.

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Thus, despite the fact that the stories of Dracula popularised by Bram Stoker have made the vampire count's homeland more famous outside the region than Bukovina, the latter territory can claim a great compliment, and subtle one-upmanship, in having its more famous neighbour named after it.

Related Topics:
Dracula - Bram Stoker - Vampire

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