section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English name Russia first appeared in the 14th century, borrowed from Medieval Latin: Russia, used in the 11th century and frequently in 12th-century British sources, in turn derived from Russi, ' the Russians ' and the suffix -ia.
  
  There are several words in Russian which translate to "Russians" in English. The noun and adjective русский, russkiy refers to ethnic Russians. The adjective российский, rossiiskiy denotes Russian citizens regardless of ethnicity. The same applies to the more recently coined noun россиянин, rossiianyn, in the sense of citizen of the Russian state.
  
  The oldest endonyms used were Rus ' (Русь) and the "Russian land" (Русская земля, Russkaya zemlya). According to the Primary Chronicle, the word Rus ' is derived from the Rus' people, who were a Swedish tribe, and from where the three original members of the Rurikid dynasty came from. The Finnish word for Swedes, ruotsi, has the same origin. In modern historiography, the early medieval East Slavic state is usually referred to as Kievan Rus', named after its capital city. Another Medieval Latin name for Rus ' was Ruthenia.
  
  In Russian, the current name of the country, Россия (Rossiya), comes from the Byzantine Greek name Ρωσία (Rosía). The name Росия (Rosiya) was first attested in 1387. The name Rossiya appeared in Russian sources in the 15th century and began to replace the vernacular Rus ' during the rise of Moscow as the centre of a unified Russian state. However, until the end of the 17th century, the country was more often referred to by its inhabitants as Rus ', the "Russian land" (Russkaya zemlya), or the "Muscovite state" (Moskovskoye gosudarstvo), among other variations.
  
  In 1721, Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire (Rossiyskaya imperiya). The name Rossiya was used as the common designation for the multinational Russian Empire and then for the modern Russian state. Rossiya is distinguished from the ethnonym russkiy, as it refers to a supranational identity, including ethnic Russians. After the Russian Revolution and the proclamation of the Russian SFSR in 1918, the "Russian" in the title of the state was Rossiyskaya, rather than Russkaya, as the former denoted a multinational state, while the latter had ethnic dimensions. In modern Russian, the name Rus ' is still used in poetry or prose to refer to either the older Russia or an imagined essence of Russia.