Podlachia

Podlachia, or Podlasie, (Podlasie, Palenkė, Падляшша, Підляшшя) is a historical region in the north-eastern part of Poland. Between 1513 and 1795 it was a voivodeship with the capital in Drohiczyn. Now the part north of the Bug River is included in the modern Podlaskie Voivodeship with the capital in Białystok. The region is called Podlasie, Podlasko or Podlasze in Polish, Palenkė in Lithuanian, Padliašša (Падляшша) in Belarusian, Pidljaššja (Підляшшя), Pidljassja (Підлясся), Pidljasije (Підлясіє), or Pidljaxija (Підляхія) in Ukrainian, Podljas’e (Подлясье) in Russian, "Podlyashe" (פּאָדליאַשע) in Yiddish, and Podlachia in Latin. There are two hypotheses regarding the origin of the name of the region. According to the first one, the name is derived from the Polish word las ("forest"), and means "near the forest". A common folk derivation is from the Proto-Slavic word les or las meaning "forest", i.e., it is "by the wood(s)" or an "area of forests", making Podlachia close in meaning to adjacent Polesia. The theory has been questioned, as it does not properly take into consideration the vowel shifts "a" > "e" > "i" in various Slavic languages (in fact, it mixes vowels from different languages). According to the second theory, the name is derived from the word liakh (or lach, лях, "Pole"), and means "near Poland". The second theory holds that the term comes from the expression pod Lachem, which may be translated literally as "under the Poles" (see: Lechia). Some claim it to mean "under Polish rule", though in the Middle Ages Podlachia was only partially under Polish rule, and since 1446 until 1569 the area belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A better variant of this theory holds that the name originates from the period when the territory was within the Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, along the borderline with the Mazovia province, primarily a fief of the Poland of the Piasts and later on part of the Kingdom of Poland of the Jagiellons.