User:Iryna Harpy/sandbox

Wikipedia: Belarusian geographical names
Sources used: BELARUS The Official Website of the Republic of Belarus

Regions

 * Brest
 * Gomel
 * Grodno
 * Minsk
 * Mogilev
 * Vitebsk

Districts

 * Rechytsa
 * Svietlahorsk

Cities in Gomel Region

 * Gomel
 * Mozyr Official map of Belarus, Gomel Region
 * Zhlobin
 * Svietlahorsk
 * Rechytsa
 * Kalinkavichy
 * Rogachyov (Rahachow? completely, utterly insane: comes up as so many convolutions of Latinized form in searches that I can't make ANY sense of it)
 * Dobrush
 * Zhitkovichi
 * Khoiniki Official website in English
 * Pyetrykav
 * Yelsk Official website in English
 * Buda-Koshelevo Official website in English
 * Narovlya Official website in English
 * Vetka Official Belarus tourism site
 * Chechersk Official website in English
 * Vasilyevichy
 * Bragin/Brahin
 * Turov/Turav

(search out more concrete nomenclature @ Gomel Region's official website}

Name of Ukraine info cut from Ukraine article
The traditional view (mostly influenced by Russian and Polish historiography) on the etymology of Ukraine is that it came from the old Slavic term ukraina which meant "border region" or "frontier" and thus corresponded to the Western term march. The term can be often found in Eastern Slavic chronicles from 1187 on, but for a long time it referred not solely to the border lands in present-day Ukraine. The plural term ukrainy was used as well in the Grand Duchy of Moscow as in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the 16th and 17th centuries, this term was applied to the lands across the border to the nomad world (Crimean Khanate). Frequent raids from the steppe made life in such regions a special and dangerous challenge. With the migration of the Great Abatis Belt southwards, the application of the term switched to Sloboda Ukraine and then to Central Ukraine. Over time it gained an ethnic meaning, as applied to the local South Rus' (Little Russia in the ecclesiastic and the imperial Russian terminology).

Many contemporary Ukrainian historians translate the term "u-kraine" as "in-land", "home-land" or "our-country". The accompanying claim that it always had a strictly separate meaning to "borderland" (ukraina vs. okraina) is considered inconsistent with a number of historical sources, often of other than Ukrainian origin. The translation as "borderland" agrees with the traditional Russian-language meaning of "у-" (u-) and "краина" (kraina).

Though the form "the Ukraine" was once the more common term in English, it has become less accepted after the Ukrainian government officially requested that the article be dropped in 1993, shortly after independence. Most sources have since dropped the article in favour of simply "Ukraine".