Re: Lucus (was: Re: Judajca)

Pavel Iosad writes:
 > Hello,
 >
 > > It's probably not applicable to this situation, but it's always struck
 > > me that an interesting point of departure for a parallel conhistory
 > > would be the adoption of orthodox Christianity by prince (and,
 > > subsequently, saint) Volodymyr of Kiev in 987-88.
 >
 > Yep. But please don't use the form _Volodymyr_ too often. It is the
 > Ukrainian form of the (not exactly) Russian _Vladimir_ (my dad's name
 > :-)), Old Russian _Volodimer(')_, and using it outside radical
 > pro-Ukrainian circles is rather ridiculuous.
 >
Well, I'm aware that it's the Ukrainian form, but I have to use one
form or another, and that's how I saw it first, in a book on Ukrainian
history (but not radically pro-Ukrainian by any means - _Borderland_,
by Anna Reid
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0813337925/qid=1030208815/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_3/104-6189772-1244714?s=books&n=507846
).  There's a Ukrainian statue of him in London, on Holland Park Lane,
which uses that name, and Kiev's in Ukraine now, anyway.  (And I'm 3/8
Ukrainian by ancestry, via Pennsylvania.)  But if you find it
ridiculous, then by all means I'll call him Vladimir.  Better yet,
I'll use both names to introduce him, and abbreviate him to V. at all
other times.  :-)

 > > For one reason or another*, he felt the need for a modern,
 > > monotheistic faith to replace paganism in his country.
 >
 > The reason is pretty simple: the formation of a decent state had been an
 > ongoing process for over a century and a half by then, so he needed a
 > unifying force (and wisely so: the northern area of Novgorod would rebel
 > very soon)
 >
I figured it was probably something like that.

[...]
 >
 > > Thereby, in a no-doubt-
 > > rather-simplified version of history, we get the influence of the
 > > orthodox church throughout the slavic world.
 >
 > Not really, Moravia and Poland were alreadu close to being converted
 > into Catholicism by the time.
 >
You're right of course - really I was just trying to avoid any
specific mention of Russia, on the grounds that it would offend
Ukrainian nationalists.  (Why I allowed this to affect my phrasing, I
don't know.)

 > > But he could have chosen differently.  He's supposed to have quite
 > > liked Islam, apart from the prohibition of alcohol.  It's probably
 > > naive to suppose that if he'd chosen differently, the Eastern European
 > > world would necessarily have ended up dominated by religion X, but
 > > it's a plausible basis for a conhistory.  Cyrillic was only ~100 years
 > > old at this time, so I guess Russian might have ended up being written
 > > in a script derived from Arabic or Hebrew.
 >
 > An intersting thought, though :-) Why not join Slaviconlang on this? :-)
 >
Maybe sometime I will - right now my a priori conlanging is going
slowly enough without starting a new project. :-)

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