Rus (name) - Alternate Anti-Normanist Theories

Alternate Anti-Normanist Theories

A number of alternative etymologies have been suggested. These are derived from the "anti-Normanist" school of thought in Russian historiography during the 19th century and in the Soviet era. These theories are discredited in mainstream academia. Slavic etymologies suggested by "anti-Normanist" scholars include:

• The Sarmatian of the Roxolani, who inhabited southern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania (from the Old- Persian rokhs, meaning light, white);
• One of two rivers in Ukraine, the Ros and Rusna, near Kiev and Pereyaslav, respectively, whose names are derived from a postulated Slavic term for "water", akin to rosa (dew), rusalka (water nymph), ruslo (stream bed). (Only rosa is related to the Sanskrit 'rasa'—water, juice, essence—suggests itself.)
• Rusiy (Русый), light-brown, said of hair color (the translation "reddish-haired", cognate with the Slavic "ryzhiy", "red-haired", is not quite exact);
• A postulated proto-Slavic word for "bear", cognate with arctos and ursus.

The Russian linguist I.N. Danilevskiy, in his Ancient Rus as Seen by Contemporaries and Descendants, argued against these theories, stating that the anti-Normanists neglected the realities of the Ancient Slavic languages and that the nation name Rus' could not have arisen from any of the proposed origins.

• The populace of the Ros River would have been known as Roshane;
• Red-haired or bear-origined people would have ended their self-name with the plural -ane or -ichi, and not with the singular -s' (red hair is one of the natural hair colors of Scandinavians and other Germanic peoples);
• Most theories are based on a Ros- root, and in Ancient Slavic an o would never have become the u in Rus'. But u could give Russian o in step of the ablaut.

Danilevskiy further argued that the term followed the general pattern of Slavic names for neighboring Uralic peoples—the Chud', Ves', Perm', Sum', etc.—but that the only possible word that it could be based on, Ruotsi, presented a historical dead-end, since no such tribal or national name was known from non-Slavic sources. "Ruotsi" is, however, the Finnish name for Sweden. But in the old Russian word Serbs pronounced as the Serb'. Danilevskiy shows that the oldest historical source, the Primary Chronicle, is inconsistent in what it refers to as the "Rus'": in adjacent passages, the Rus' are grouped with Varangians, with the Slavs, and also set apart from the Slavs and Varangians. Danilevskiy suggests that the Rus' were originally not a nation but a social class, which can explain the irregularities in the ''Primary Chronicle and the lack of early non-Slavic sources.

The name Rus' may have originated from the Iranian name of the Volga River (by F.Knauer Moscow 1901), as well as from the Rosh of Ezekiel. Prof. George Vernadsky has suggested a derivation from the Roxolani or from the Aryan term ronsa (moisture, water). River names such as Ros are common in Eastern Europe.