Svarozhits

Svarozhits (Latin: Zuarasiz, Zuarasici, Old East Slavic: Сварожиць, Russian: Сварожиц), Svarozhich (Old East Slavic: Сварожичь, Russian: Сварожич) is a Slavic god of fire, son of Svarog. One of the few Pan-Slavic gods. He is most likely identical with Radegast, less often identified with Dazhbog. The theonym Svarozhits comes from the theonym Svarog with the suffix -its, -ich. According to most scholars, Svarog is related to the word svar "quarrel", svariti "to quarrel, argue", and cognate words are Old English andswaru (→ English swear), Old Norse sverja "to swear", or Sanskrit svarati (स्वरति) "to sing", "to sound", "to praise". An affinity has also been suggested with Old High German gi-swerc "storm clouds", Old English sweorc "darkness, cloud, fog", Dutch zwerk "cloud, cloudy sky", and Indian svárgas "heaven". It has also been suggested that Svarog may be a borrowing from Indo-Aryan languages, but the Slavs and Indo-Aryans were separated by too much space for them to have direct contact. The suffix -its, -ich (Proto-Slavic *-itj, *-iťь) is generally considered a patronymic suffix, i.e. Svarozhits literally means "son of Svarog" (compare Polish pan "master" → panicz "son of master"). Some scholars, however, believe that the suffix here serves a diminutive function, and Svarozhits means "young, little Svarog", just as Serbo-Croatian Djurdjić is not "son of Djurdjo", but "little Djurdjo", or surviving up to the 18th century, Polabian büg and büzäc. Aleksander Brückner refers to Lithuanian prayers where the diminutive form dievaite is used instead of dieve (e.g. Perkune dievaite). Svarozhits first appears in a text concerning the Polabian Slavs.