Voronezh

Voronezh (/vəˈroʊnɪʃ, -ˈrɒn-/ və-ROH-nish, -⁠RO-; Russian: Воронеж, IPA: [vɐˈronʲɪʂ] ^ⓘ) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia, straddling the Voronezh River 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising to 1,057,681 in the 2021 Census, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.

The first chronicle references to the word Voronezh are dated 1177, when Yaropolk, the prince of Ryazan, having lost the battle, fled "to Voronozh" and there was moving "from town to town". Modern data of archaeology and history interpret Voronezh as a geographical region, which included the Voronezh River (a tributary of the Don) and a number of settlements. In the lower reaches of the river, a unique Slavic town-planning complex of the 8th to early 11th century was discovered, which covered the territory of the present city of Voronezh and its environs (about 42 km long, about 13 forts and many unfortified villages). By the 12th to 13th centuries, most of the old towns were desolate, but new settlements appeared upstream, closer to Ryazan.

For many years, the hypothesis of the Soviet historian Vladimir Zagorovsky dominated: he produced the toponym Voronezh from the hypothetical Slavic personal name Voroneg. This man allegedly gave the name of a small town in the Principality of Chernigov (now the village of Voronizh in Ukraine). Later, in the 11th or 12th century, the settlers were able to "transfer" this name to the Don region, where they named the second city Voronezh, and the river received its name from the city. However, now many researchers criticize the hypothesis, since in reality neither the name of Voroneg nor the second city was revealed, and usually the names of Russian cities repeated the names of the rivers, but not vice versa.

The linguistic comparative analysis of the name Voronezh was carried out by the Khovansky Foundation in 2009. There is an indication of the place names of many countries in Eurasia, which may partly be not only similar in sound, but also united by common Indo-European languages: Varanasi, Varna, Verona, Brno, etc.

A comprehensive scientific analysis was conducted in 2015–2016 by the historian Pavel Popov. His conclusion: Voronezh is a probable Slavic macrotoponym associated with outstanding signs of nature, has a root voron- (from Proto-Slavic vorn) in the meaning of "black, dark" and the suffix -ezh (-azh, -ozh). It was not "transferred" and in the 8th to 9th centuries it marked a vast territory covered with black forests (oak forests) – from the mouth of the Voronezh River to the Voronozhsky annalistic forests in the middle and upper reaches of the river, and in the west to the Don (many forests were cut down). This historian believes that the main "city" of the early town-planning complex could repeat the name of the region – Voronezh. Now the hillfort is located in the administrative part of the modern city, in the Voronezh upland oak forest. This is one of Europe's largest ancient Slavic hillforts, the area of which – more than 9 hectares – 13 times the area of the main settlement in Kiev before the baptism of Rus' in the year 988.

Folk etymology claims the name comes from combining the Russian words for raven (ворон, voron) and hedgehog (ёж, yozh) into Voronezh (Воронеж). According to this explanation, two Slavic tribes named after the animals used this combination to name the river which later in turn provided the name for a settlement. There is not believed to be any scientific support for this explanation.

In the 16th century, the Middle Don basin, including the Voronezh River, was gradually conquered by the Grand Principality of Moscow from the Nogai Horde (a successor state of the Golden Horde), and the current city of Voronezh was established in 1586 by Feodor I as a fort protecting the Muravsky Trail trade route against the slave raids of the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The city was named after the river.

In the 17th century, Voronezh gradually evolved into a sizable town. Weronecz is shown on the Worona river in Resania in Joan Blaeu's map of 1645. Peter the Great built a dockyard in Voronezh where the Azov Flotilla was constructed for the Azov campaigns in 1695 and 1696. This fleet, the first ever built in Russia, included the first Russian ship of the line, Goto Predestinatsia. The Orthodox diocese of Voronezh was instituted in 1682 and its first bishop, Mitrofan of Voronezh, was later proclaimed the town's patron saint.