The Origin of the Name “Rus”

I have occasionally gone looking for the original meaning of a name. The results vary in credibility. My name, “Marc” is said to variously derive from words meaning “warlike,” “polite,” “horse,” or “virile!” The most credible sources seem to agree on a derivation from “Mars,” and a meaning of “warlike.”

The word “Russian” poses similar issues: Are they “the Red people” (which would fit the Norse—think of our term “rosy” and put it together with the frost-nipped face of a pale Norseman framed by a shock of ginger hair)? Or are they “The people who live on the Ros river” (Or is it called the Ros river because the Ros/Rus’ established a base there)? Or does the name derive from the Finnish word “roets/ruotsi” which roughly means “rower” (Vasnetsov, 2019).

By about 750 CE, there were Scandinavian trading posts on the Dnieper River, close to the Black Sea in the Ukraine region, and Arab silver was making its way back to the Baltic nations, with Baltic furs traveling the other way. Those Scandinavian people were called “The Rus.” It is not a small jump to see how that could become “The Russians” over time.

At around the same time, the enterprising Norsemen had also portaged their longboats into the great Volga River—on which four of Russia’s great cities, including Moscow, were later to be established—and began to trade with the Arabs. The Islamic missionary, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, called these dangerous trading partners the “Rusiya.” The name had stuck, and so have the Russians!