The answer to the question of who gave Kartvelian names to Ukrainian rivers has been hiding in plain sight within Herodotus’s Histories for over 2,500 years.
In his account, Herodotus describes the right bank of the Dnipro River as being inhabited by Scythian farmers, whom he calls arotires (from the Greek arotēr, meaning "plowman" or "tiller"). He notes that these arotires produced grain for sale, clearly identifying them as agriculturalists. In the very next paragraph, Herodotus refers to the inhabitants of the left bank as Georgoi, or "Scythian-Georgians," but provides no explicit indication of their occupation.
Curiously, the term Georgoi—mistakenly derived from the Greek geōrgos, meaning "farmer"—has been consistently translated as "farmers" across various languages. In English translations, the distinction between the two groups is preserved: arotires are rendered as "tillers" and Georgoi as "farmers." However, in Russian translations, both terms are collapsed into a single word, "farmers," with Georgoi being translated morpheme by morpheme from Greek (geo- "earth" + ergon "work"). This raises a critical question: if Herodotus is describing two groups of Scythian farmers in consecutive paragraphs, why would he use different terms to refer to them?
The proximity of these descriptions—both in the original Greek and in translation—makes this inconsistency striking. A more logical narrative structure would be: "On the right bank live the Scythian Arotyres, who grow grain for sale, and they also inhabit the left bank." Instead, Herodotus writes, "On the right bank live the Arotyres, and on the left bank live the Georgoi." Why would he contrast the two groups if both were simply farmers?
The key lies in a mistranslation: the Georgoi were likely not farmers at all. Herodotus may have recorded their name based on hearsay, either mishearing it or intentionally adapting it to the Greek term Georgoi due to phonetic similarity. This hypothesis aligns with a theory proposed by P. Ushakov in a 1946 article in the Bulletin of Ancient History, where he argued that the "Scythian-Georgians" were named for their tribal designation, not their occupation, due to consonance with the Greek Georgoi. Ushakov’s insight, later cited in the 1972 edition of Herodotus’s Histories, suggests that the Georgoi were not agriculturalists but a distinct group misidentified by Herodotus. Unfortunately, Ushakov’s interpretation has largely been overlooked.
If the Georgoi were not the Greek "farmers," then who were they? This question opens the door to a deeper exploration of their true identity and their potential role in assigning Kartvelian names to the rivers of Ukraine—a linguistic legacy that Herodotus’s account may unwittingly preserve.
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