Svyatoslav

Ouch!

A guy just brought a bronze into Antiques Roadshow. It's a bronze by Eugence Lansere, "Sviatoslav on the way to Tsargrad", (1886). Before saying the name, Eric Silver apoligized for his "awful" Russian. He needed to.

Svy-at-sah-lov [svaɪ-æt-'sɑː-lɒv], he said, very slowly. And, more quickly the second time, Svy-ats-lov ['svaɪ-æts-lɒv].

Ouch. So much wrong is such a short word! First, there's final devoicing in Russian, so the V is an F, but that's hardly the worst. Then he reversed the -TOS- to -TSO, turning Svyatoslav into Svyatsolav, and then compressed, or possibly slurred, it to Svyatslav. That last wouldn't have been too bad, really; the unstressed linking vowel is often swallowed by Russians almost that completely. But the Svyat- ... That just doesn't work at all.

Sviatoslav (they spell it; Svyatoslav I'd spell it; Святослав in Russian and Ukrainian) is not Svy-at. That letter Я - which is transliterated "ia" or "ya" - is a so-called "soft vowel", indicating palatalization of the preceding consonant, here a palatalized V which sounds much like a V+ jot (y-glide, or [j]. So it's Svja-ta-slahv ['svʲæ-tə-slɒf]. You'd think Eric Silver would have gotten a better pronunciation guide!

(In his defense, I'll say this is a common misunderstanding of the Russian "soft vowels". I haven't heard By-elorussia, but I have heard Buy-lo Russia. And I'll never forget Rye-a-zan (Ryazan, which is actually Rjazan with a palatalized final N [rʲɪˈzanʲ]. But still: Ouch.)

Svyatoslav the ruler was notable for being an expansionist, creating a huge empire out of Rus' and bringing down two others (Khazaria and the First Bulgarian Empire... it's weird, isn't it, to think of Bulgarian Empires, or Lithuania as a major player? "Look on my works, ye mighty...", isn't it?) - though his early death in battle resulted in his young sons Yaroslav, Oleg, and Vladimir (Volodymyr or Waldemar), all under 16 when their father died, fought a civil war, with Yaroslav killing Oleg and Vladimir fleeing to Scandinavia, whence he returned after 6 years with Varangian soldiers to defeat his brother and become Vladimir the Great. He also remained a staunch pagan despite his mother's having converted to Christianity; it was Vladimir who converted Rus'.

Svyatoslav the name is notable for being the first Kievan ruler's name which is indisputably Slavic in origin (as opposed to earlier names, which are ultimately derived from Old Norse, such as Igor (from Ingvar). Some scholars speculate that the name Svyatoslav, composed of the Slavic roots for "holy" and "glory", was an artificial creation, combining the names of his predecessors Oleg and Rurik (they mean "holy" and "glorious" in Old Norse, respectively). Whatever, Svyatoslav and his successors such as Vladimir, Yaroslav, and Mstislav have names which were new to Slavdom, and confined to Rus'.