Did you know “Ukraine” literally meant borderland?
And before the 19th century, this region was officially called Little Russia (Malorossiya) not as an insult, but as honor.
Before the 1900s, the lands around Kiev were known as Malorossiya, “Little Russia.” That didn’t mean “lesser,” it meant the original Rus’, the spiritual and historical cradle of the Russian world.
The name came from Byzantium, rooted in an even older Greek tradition. The ancient Greeks called their original homeland “Little Greece” (Mikrà Hellás) and their colonies in southern Italy “Great Greece” (Megálē Hellás). The Byzantines inherited this naming pattern. By the 14th century, the Patriarchate of Constantinople used the same pattern for the lands of Rus’, calling the Kiev region “Mikrà Rhōssía” (Little Russia) and the northern territories “Megálē Rhōssía” (Great Russia).
(: Patriarch Philotheos I, Letter to Metropolitan Alexis of Moscow, 1354.)
Rus’ later adopted this Byzantine model around the 14th century. For example:
In 1335, Prince Yuri II Boleslav of Galicia–Volhynia titled himself “dux totius Russiæ Minoris” – Prince of all Little Rus’.
The word Malorossiya (Little Russia) was also common among the Cossack elite, especially the Hetmans, who saw themselves as defenders of the Orthodox faith and heirs of ancient Rus.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1654) wrote to Tsar Alexei calling his lands Little Russia, stressing unity with Orthodox Rus.
Cossack chronicles like the Samovydets Chronicle and Hustyn Chronicle use Little Russia when describing wars and treaties.
Hetman letters by Vyhovsky, Doroshenko, and Mazepa mention Malorossiya in diplomacy with Moscow and Poland.
Church records from the Kiev Metropolia used the Greek term Mikra Rossia, later adopted by the Cossacks themselves.
In the 19th century, Western powers began twisting this heritage. They rebranded Ukraine, literally “borderland”, into a new political identity and used it as a project to separate “Ukraine” from “Russia”, an anti-Russia project.
