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Živa, Zhiva () is a
mother goddess
A mother goddess is a major goddess characterized as a mother or progenitor, either as an embodiment of motherhood and fertility or fulfilling the cosmological role of a creator- and/or destroyer-figure, typically associated the Earth, sky, ...
of one of the tribes belonging to the
Obodritic confederation of the
Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs, also known as Elbe Slavs
and more broadly as Wends, is a collective term applied to a number of Lechites, Lechitic (West Slavs, West Slavic) tribes who lived scattered along the Elbe river in what is today eastern Germany. The ...
. The goddess so appears only in the ''
Chronicle
A chronicle (, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events ...
'' of
Helmold of Bozov. He described the strengthening of the pagan cult during the reign of
Niklot
Niklot or Nyklot (died August 1160) was a tribal chief, chief or prince of the Slavic peoples, Slavic Obotrites and an ancestor of the House of Mecklenburg. He became chief of the Obotrite confederacy, including the Kissini and the Circipani, bet ...
:
As the tribe's main
gord was
Ratzeburg
Ratzeburg (; Low German: ''Ratzborg'') is a town in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is surrounded by Ratzeburger See, four lakes—the resulting isthmuses between the lakes form the access lanes to the town. Ratzeburg is the capital of the distri ...
, Živa, in one copy of the ''Chronicle'', is called "Goddess of Ratzeburg" ().
In copies of the ''Chronicle'', the name is noted as: (
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...
copy), (
Lübeck
Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...
), (
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
), (
Szczecin
Szczecin ( , , ; ; ; or ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Poland-Germany border, German border, it is a major port, seaport, the la ...
). The Copenhagen, Lübeck and Szczecin manuscripts indicate that the name contained the
grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...
⟨w⟩ (
; the Szczecin notation was created as a result of frequent ⟨u⟩ → ⟨n⟩ alternation and reflected the form ''*Syuua'', while the double ⟨u⟩ = ⟨w⟩, which indicates the original form (''*Syva''). The Viennese transcript is the most distorted in relation to the original.
Scholars agree on the etymology of this
theonym
A theonym (from Greek (), 'god', attached to (), ) is a proper name of a deity.
Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics, the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. Theonymy helps develop an und ...
. It is read as the Slavic ''*Živa'', from Slavic feminine adjective
''*živa'' "alive, live, living". ''Živa'' is also a personal name attested in several Slavic languages, e.g. the Old Polabian personal name ''*Živa'' (Latin: , 1336), the
Old Polish
The Old Polish language () was a period in the history of the Polish language between the 10th and the 16th centuries. It was followed by the Middle Polish language.
The sources for the study of the Old Polish language are the data of the co ...
surname ''Żywa'' (Latin: , , , ), the
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
given name , the
Bulgarian , and others. Originally, therefore, this theonym was a given name, which then became an epithet of an unknown goddess, whose characteristics would have to be related to the meaning of the name; this theonym can be understood as a wishing name, e.g., "may she be alive and live long", or a characterizing name, e.g., "she who is alive".
Vyacheslav Ivanov i
Vladimir Toporov considered Živa to be an epithet of the goddess
Mokosh
Mokosh ( ) is a List of Slavic deities, Slavic goddess. No narratives about this deity have survived and scholars must rely on academic disciplines like philology to discern details about her.
According to etymological reconstruction, Mokosh wa ...
(which was preserved in the names of the Polabians after Christianization).
See also
*
140 Siwa
References
Works cited
*
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziva (mythology)
Mother goddesses
Slavic goddesses