Probably the earliest evidence of the name of the country of Bolesław the Brave appears in the sequence, i.e. songs in honour of the Saint. Adalbert, inscribed shortly after 1000 in the codex now kept in Bamberg. The work, containing the word “Polania”, was written by someone who certainly had no connection with the Brave state and had only heard that relics of the famous Saint. Wojciech existed there. There is no doubt, however, that “Poland” is not a name given to the country of the Brave by outsiders, like the name “Germany” which the Slavic peoples gave to the Germans. We have a source that clearly confirms that Bolesław the Brave accepted the name “Poland” and used it in his official title. Around 1005, the prince began to mint silver denarii with the image of a bird on the obverse and the inscription “PRINCE[P]S POLONIE, meaning “ruler of Poland”. This coin is widely known thanks to its reproduction on the twenty zloty note.
Field or civilization
Some researchers assume that the name “Poland” was introduced by Bolesław the Brave. This is contradicted by the information provided by two authors who are well versed in Polish affairs. The first is Bruno of Querfurt, a Saxon bishop and missionary who stayed for some time in Poland at the beginning of the 11th century and met the Braves. Shortly before 1009 he wrote a life of St. Wojciech, in which Mieszko I had already named the Poles prince. The same information, namely the attribution of the Polish title to the father of the Brave, appeared in the chronicle of Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg, completed in 1018 and constituting the most important treasure of knowledge about the early Piast dynasty.
It is impossible to resolve the dilemma whether Bruno and Thietmar transferred the name to the time of Mieszko I, which only began to be used by his son, or whether the terms “Poland” and “Poles” already existed in internal circulation in the 19th century, but did not find their way into the written sources of the time. Moreover, almost all the contemporary texts of Mieszko I that mention him were written outside his reign and their authors did not really know what to call their country and its people.
However, the old idea that the term “Poland” comes from the tribal name “Polanie” is certainly wrong. There is no source confirming the existence of such a tribe. The tribal theory was a consequence of the use by historians in the 19th and 20th centuries of a specific model of development of societies in the pre-state period. It was assumed then that the tribe was a necessary stage of evolution leading to the creation of the state. Moreover, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the prevailing belief was that the process of formation of social structures was long and slow – spanning several centuries – on the basis of which the Piast dynasty established the Polish state. At the end of the 20th century, thanks to dendrochronology, a new and accurate method of dating wood, a revolution took place in archaeological research into the origins of the country. It turned out that in Greater Poland, that is, in the center of the future duchy of Mieszko I, fortresses began to be built on a more massive scale only in the 1030s and 1040s. The construction of fortresses was certainly associated with the emergence of political power. Today we know that this happened much more quickly and violently than previously expected. Mieszko I built his power thanks to the military organization he created and strictly subordinate to himself, called a squad, and not by assuming power over a tribe. However, all forms of source records, even those associated with “Polans”, should refer to the state and its inhabitants, and not to the tribe. So where did the name of the country come from?
The term “Poland” is of Slavic origin and derives from the word “field”. The mechanism for creating this type of proper name, which constructs the identity and distinction of a group of people, was well known in ancient times. An excellent example is the Italian Campania, whose name comes from the Latin word “campus”, meaning “field”. The description of the land in Pliny the Elder’s “Natural History” allows us to understand how the name was justified. “The Field” gave its name to the entire region of Italy, because it was perceived as a unique place in all respects, covered with various types of crops, endowed with a friendly climate and varied surfaces. In the same description, Pliny also praised the coastal location of Campania and the characterological advantages of the people who lived there. In short, the “field” that gives the land its name is treated as an area of civilization that is able to exploit the natural characteristics of the area for the benefit of its inhabitants. This type of location is the opposite of wild and hostile areas such as forests, swamps, or high parts of rocky mountains.
Kiev Polana
The earliest example of the use of a name derived from “field” in the Slavic circle was recorded by the so-called Bavarian Geographer, an anonymous monk from Bavaria, who around 845 compiled a list of the names of the peoples living north of the Danube and east of the border of the Carolingian Empire. The list of ethnonyms was then edited and supplemented by various authors until the beginning of the 10th century. Among the tribes living further away from the lands controlled by the Carolingians, the “Opolini”, or “Opole people”, emerged. Since this is the only and very laconic mention, practically nothing is known about the group that called itself this. Ancient researchers associated “Opole” with the Opole of Upper Silesia, but today, thanks to the already mentioned dendrochronological method, it is known that the oldest stronghold of Opole began to be built only at the end of the second half of the 10th century. The name “Opole” also comes from “field”. The context of this word is even more interesting, because in documents from the 13th century the colloquial word “opole” appears written in Polish, denoting a local neighborhood community. On this basis, some researchers have considered opole to be the basic and most archaic form of organization of Slavic societies. All these examples show the range of uses of names and terms derived from the word “field”, using the prefix “o-” emphasizing the designation and separation of an area. It can be assumed that in each case – a state, a tribe, a city and a neighborhood community – there was a way of thinking based on the idealization of the “field” itself. It was understood as a native, beloved and precisely defined space, which gave identity and name to the community, and was contrasted with all the evil of the surrounding and foreign world.
Such an exemplary argument was written in Slavic Cyrillic in the “Romance of Bygone Years”, the oldest chronicle of Kiev written in the second decade of the 12th century. It refers to the beginning of Kiev. According to the chronicler, the place of foundation of the city was indicated by St. Andrew, brother of St. Peter. According to legend, the apostle traveled the famous route from the Greeks to the Varangians, that is, from Constantinople to the Baltic Sea and from there to Rome. From the Black Sea to central Russia, the road ran along the Dnieper. St. Andrew sailed downstream and stopped on the hills where Kiev would later be built and blessed them. As the story continues, it turns out that the area of the future city and its surroundings are called the Field, and the people living there are called Glades. Kij was also a Pole and founded the integrative community of Kijów, named after him. The “Romance of Bygone Years” also included further evidence of Polan’s uniqueness, such as the abundance of game in the forests surrounding the city and the civilizational superiority of the Poles over all neighboring peoples.
The Kiev Chronicle, as well as the note by the Bavarian geographer, are proof that an identically conceived name for a given community appeared at different times in the history of the Slavic region and in its various places. This is a well-known phenomenon. Moreover, names such as Serbs, Croats or, for example, Drevlans, certainly referred to more than one group of the Slavic population in the Middle Ages.
Polish or Country
The explanation of how the meaning of the term “Poland” was understood in medieval Polish literature appeared much later than in Russia. Gallus Anonymous, whose chronicle is contemporary with “Romance of Bygone Years”, did not feel the need to translate the etymology of “Poland”. Only from the work of Master Wincenty
From the chronicler’s diary of the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, you can learn about the close ties between the Poles and the “camp”. Kadłubek announced this laconically and in passing. The chronicler simply translated the name “Poles” into Latin as “Campestres”, a word derived from the noun “campus” meaning “camp”.
The fact that in medieval Poland the connection between the Poles and the “countryside” was understood in a similar way as in Kiev can be seen in the “Life of (the Greater) Saint Stanislaus”, written by the Dominican Vincent in the 1350s. This hagiographer also spoke extensively about the history of Poland and was convinced that the country was responsible for the misdeeds of its rulers and their subjects. One illustration of this thesis is the legendary story taken by the Dominican Vincent from the “Hungarian-Polish Chronicle” about the allegedly unsuccessful efforts of Mieszko I to obtain the royal crown. The angel forbade the Pope to make the Polish prince king. This decision was accompanied by an extensive justification. The Poles – according to the angel – should prefer injustice to justice, they preferred thickets and hunting to the plains of the fields and agricultural products grown in the fields, they loved dogs rather than people, they persecuted the poor and did not obey God’s law. Under the pen of the Dominican Vincent, the Poles of Mieszko I rejected the most important determinants of civilized life, including – significantly – the cultivation of the fields, considered one of the most important cultural achievements. In this way, the Poles denied their name and were punished for it. “The (Greater) Life of Saint Stanislaus” is therefore the oldest Polish confirmation of associating the origin of the name “Poland” with “countryside” understood as an area of civilization.
Ph.D. Pawel Żmudzki – medievalist, professor at the University of Warsaw and member of the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw. Member of the editorial board of “Acta Poloniae Historica”. He specializes in source studies and comparative research on medieval historiography. He has published, among others: “Dux fabulosus. On the historiographical tradition around the figure of Leszek the Black, from “Gesta Lestkonis” to the works of Bartosz Paprocki” (Warsaw 2023), “The ruler and the warriors. Narratives about leaders, troops and wars in the earliest historiography of Poland and Russia” (Wrocław 2009), “Study of the Divided Kingdom” (Warsaw 2000).
