226 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 201. 



3. To performe the whole service at our owne cost. 



4. Not to hinder any man in his owne way of makeing 



saltpetre, nor importation from forreine parts." 



The following memorandum is underwritten : 



" Mr. Speaker hath our Bill ; Be pleased to-morrow 

 to call for it." 



The original draft of the above disinterested 

 offer may be seen Harl. CLVIII. fol. 272. 



FuBVUS. 

 St. James's. 



(Vol. viii., p. 150.) 



The difficulty in investigating the origin of this 

 word is that the letter c, " the most wonderful of 

 all letters," says ^'ichhoff (Vergleichu7ig der Spra- 

 chen, p. 55.), sounds like k before the vowels a, o, 

 u, but before e, i, in French, Spanish, Portuguese, 

 and Dutch, as s, in Italian as tsh, in German as 

 ts. It is always ts in Polish and Bohemian. In 

 Russian it is represented by a special letter iij, 

 tsi; but in Celtic it is always k. Conformably 

 with this principle, the Russians, like the Germans, 

 Poles, and Bohemians, pronounce the Latin c as 

 ts. So Cicero in these languages is pronounced 

 Tsitsero, very differently from the Greeks, who 

 called him Kikero. The letter tsi is a supple- 

 mentary one in Russian, having no cori'esponding 

 letter in the Greek alphabet, from which the 

 Russian v/as formed in the ninth century by St. 

 Cyril. The word to be sought then amongst 

 cognate languages as the counterpart of tsar (or 

 as the Germans write it czai^) is car, as pronounced 

 in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and 

 Dutch. The most probable etymological con- 

 nexion that I can discover is with the Sanscrit 



•rf 4 J car, to move, to advance ; the root of the 



Greek ko/J^oc, in English car, Latin curro, French 

 cours. So Sanscrit caras, carat, movable, nimble ; 

 Greek XP«»"') Latin currens. And Sanscrit caras, 

 motion, Greek xopos, Latin currus, cwsus, French 

 char, English car, cart, &c. The early Russians 

 were doubtless wanderers, an off-shoot of the 

 people known to the Greeks as Scythians, and to 

 the Hebrews and Arabians as Gog and Magog, 

 who travelled in cars, occupying first one terri- 

 tory with their flocks, but not cultivating the land, 

 then leaving it to nature and taking up another 

 resting-place. It is certain that the Russians 

 have many' Asiatic words in their vocabulary, 

 which must necessarily have occurred from their 

 being for more than two centuries sometimes 

 under Tatar, and sometimes under Mongol do- 

 mination ; and the origin of this word tsar or car 

 may have to be sought on the plateaus of North- 

 east Asia. In the Shemitic tongues (Arabic, He- 

 brew, Persian, &c.) no connexion of sound or 



meaning, so probable as the above Indo-European 

 one, is to be found. The popular derivations of 

 Nabupolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, &c., 

 are not to be trusted. It is remarkable, however, 

 that these names are significant in Russian. (See 

 " N. & Q.," Vol. vii., pp. 432, 433, note:) The 

 cuneatic inscriptions may yet throw light on these 

 Assyrian names. In Russian the kingdom is 

 Tsarstvo, the king Tsar, his queen Tsarina, his 

 son is Tsarevitch, and his daughter Tsarevna. 

 The word is probably pure Russian or Slavic. 

 The Russian tsar used about two hundred years 

 ago to be styled duke by foreign courts, but he 

 has advanced in the nomenclature of royalty to be 

 an emperor. The Russians use the word impe- 

 ratore for emperor, Kesar for Csesar, and samo- 

 derslietse for sovereign. T. J. Buckton. 



Birmingham. 



In Voltaire's History of the Russian Empire, it 

 is stated that the title of Czar may possibly be 

 derived from the Tzars or Tchars of the kingdom 

 of Casan. When John, or Ivan Basilides, Grand 

 Prince of Russia, had completed the reduction of 

 this kingdom, he assumed this title, and it has 

 since continued to his successors. Before the 

 reign of John Basilides, the sovereigns of Russia 

 bore the name of Velihe Knez, that is, great prince, 

 great lord, great chief, which in Christian coun- 

 tries was afterwards rendered by that of great 

 duke. The Czar Michael Federovitz, on occasion 

 of the Holstein embassy, assumed the titles of 

 Great Knez and Great Lord, Conservator of all 

 the Russias, Prince of Wolodimir, Moscow, No- 

 vogorod, &c., Tzar of Casan, Tzar of Astracan, 

 Tzar of Siberia. The name of Tzar was there- 

 fore the title of those Oriental princes, and there- 

 fore it is more probable for it to have been de- 

 rived from the Tshas of Persia tlian from the 

 Roman Caesars, whose name very likely never 

 reached the ears of the Siberian Tzars on the 

 banks of the Oby. In another part of Voltaire's 

 Historij, when giving an account of the celebrated 

 battle of Narva, where Charles XII., with nine 

 thousand men and ten pieces of cannon, defeated 

 " the Russian army with eighty thousand fighting 

 men, supported by one hundred and forty-five 

 pieces of cannon," he says, " Among the captives 

 was the son of a King of Georgia, whom Charles 

 sent to Stockholm ; his name was Mittelesky 

 Czarowitz, or Czar's Son, which is farther proof 

 that the title of Czar or Tzar was not originally 

 derived from the Roman Caesars." To the above 

 slightly abbreviated description may not be unin- 

 terestingly added the language of Voltaire, which 

 immediately follows the first reference : 



" No title, how great soever, is of any signification, 

 unless they M'ho bear it are great and powerful of 

 themselves. The word emperor, which denoted only 

 the ge?tcral of an army, became the title of the sove- 



