knyaz

, or is a historical Slavic title, used both as a royal and noble title in different times of history and different ancient Slavic lands. It is usually translated into English as prince or duke, depending on specific historical context and the potentially known Latin equivalents of the title for each bearer of the name. These translations probably derive from the fact that the title tsar was often treated as equivalent to "king" by European monarchs. In Latin sources the title is usually translated as , but the word was originally derived from the common Germanic (king). The female form transliterated from Bulgarian and Russian is, in Slovene and Serbo-Croatian (Serbian Cyrillic: ), kniahinia (княгіня) in Belarusian and kniazioŭna (князёўна) is the daughter of the prince, (княгиня) in Ukrainian. In Russian, the daughter of a knyaz is. In Russian, the son of a knyaz is ( in its old form). The title is pronounced and written similarly in different European languages. In Serbo-Croatian and some West Slavic languages, the word has later come to denote "lord", and in Czech, Polish and Slovak also came to mean "priest" as well as "prince/duke". In Sorbian it means simply "Mister" (from "Master". Compare French from "my lord"), and the Catholic title "monsignor" for a priest. Today the term is still used as the most common translation of "prince" in Slovenian, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian literature. is also found as a surname in former Yugoslavia. Etymology