A governorate, or a guberniya (, also romanized ; ), was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire. Unlike Russia where gubernias were abolished in 1929, in Ukraine subdivision of gubernias was abolished in 1925. The term is usually translated as "government", "governorate", or "province". A governorate was ruled by a governor (, "gubernator"), a word borrowed from Latin , in turn from Greek . Sometimes the term "guberniya" was informally used to refer to the office of a governor.