TSAR, CZAR AND SAR.

Lake County Press, Issue 2137, 27 September 1906, Page 7

TSAR, CZAR AND SAR.

Though we occasionally read in the newspapers of the Czar, referring to Nicholas If., he is almost universally designated as the Tsar. Though many learned etymologists have said that the national title of the Russian Sovereign is a corruption of the word Caesar, like the German Kaiser this is a mistake. The cause of the error is that at the beginning of the eighteenth century we know the Russians only through the Poles, with whom we had long international intercourse before we became acquainted with the Muscovites. The word "Czar" is the Polish form of the word "Tsar" with the slight difference in the pronunciation which distinguishes the two words derived from the Slavonic language. '['he Russians, like all the Slavs, belong to the Creek Church, using the (Cyrillic alphabet , containing ?>H signs still employed in the sacred language, but reduced in .",1 ill the common language. The Catholic Slavs, like the Poles, having kept the Latin alphabet of 12! signs, were compelled to resort to the combination of double letters to take the place of the sibillanl consonants which are found in the C,\ rillic alphabet. The "c/." forms one of these coniliinal ions ; hence the Polish orthography, which was adopted at first by some illustrious writers like Voltaire and Saint-Simon, The same rale applies to the derivatives of the word "Tsar"—Tsarine, Tsarevna. Tsarevitch. These words are even spelled Cesarin. ('csarevnn, and Csarevilch, as a tribute to their imaginary origin. But the word "Tsar" litis no Latin etymology, and is not a translation of the word