p. 11 | TSAR, CZAR, AND SAR

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 16, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 16.

TSAR, CZAR, AND SAR.

ALTHO the majority of newspapers, when speaking of Nicholas II., call him the "tsar," many of our confrères designate him under the name of "czar." Of these two names which is the correct one? "Tsar" undoubtedly; there can be no mistake about it.

The national title of the Russian sovereigns is not, as it has been said by some etymologists more ingenious than educated, the corruption of the word "cæsar," like the Germanic "kaiser," for instance.

The cause of this error is that at the beginning of the eighteenth century we only knew the Russians through the Poles, with whom we had international intercourse long before we got acquainted with the Muscovites. The word "czar" is the Polish form of the word "tsar," with a slight difference of pronunciation which distinguishes the two words derived from the Slavonic language.

We know that all the Russians, like all the Slavs, belong to the Greek Church and use the Cyrillic alphabet containing thirty-eight signs, still employed in the sacred language, but reduced to thirty-one in the common language. The Catholic Slavs, like the Poles, having kept the Latin alphabet of twenty-four signs, were compelled to resort to combinations of double letters to take the place of the "sibilant" consonants which are found in the Cyrillic alphabet. The "cz" forms one of these combinations; hence the Polish orthography, which was adopted at first by some illustrious writers like Voltaire and Saint-Simon.

The same rule applies to the derivatives of the word "tsar:" tsarine, tsarevna, tsarevitch, which some authors persist in writing czarine, czarevna, czarevitch.

These words are even spelled césarine, césarevna, and césarevitch, as a tribute to their imaginary origin.

But the word "tsar" has no Latin etymology; it is not the translation of the word "cæsar." The proof of it is that Peter the Great added the title "imperator" to his title of "tsar" during the first years of his reign.

Concerning the true etymology of "tsar" we may be obliged to look for it in the Persian "sâr," which means king, and is an old Chaldean word. —L'Evénement.