--- tgpedersen <
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Odd. How come it means "king" in all Germanic
> languages, but "prince"
> in the Slavic ones?
****GK: Depends on time and place. Sometimes "knyaz'"
could be as important a title as "emperor", never mind
"king", sometimes not. There were periods when the
chief "knyazi" were titled "Velykyj Knyaz", and other
times when this was just honorific (I'm basically
referring to Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusan, and for a
time Lithuanian practice /in their Slavic texts
anyway/. "King", I think, was usually rendered by
"kral""krul" "korol" or the like (after Charlemagne,
an Emperor from 800 BTW). Slavs also borrowed titles
from other neighbours (like "kagan" from the Khazars
(two perhaps three attestations) and "tsar" /I've read
various theories about that one/****
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