Sweden to call people of Belarus belarusier

The Swedish Academy decided to change the official Swedish name of the people of Belarus from vitryssar to belarusier following the requests of community.

The appropriate decision was made at the academy session on September 25.

As BelaPAN learnt from Dzmitry Plaks, a Swedish writer of Belarusian origin, the Swedish Academy Dictionary, composed and published by the Academy, doesn’t contain geographical names, but includes the names of peoples.

Plaks explains that the Academy Dictionary offers a standard usage of the words. As the word belarusier comes from the name of the country – Belarus – a decision on changing the name of the country should be made.

A session of the so called language group, consisted of representatives of a number of organizations, including the Swedish Academy and the Swedish Language Council is to be held on October 1. They are to consider a question of the official change the geographical name of Belarus in the Swedish language.

As we have reported earlier, the Belarusian living in Sweden have been gaining for many years that the official name of Belarus should be changed in Swedish. They noticed that the current name of Belarus – Vitryssland – means literally ‘White Russia’. In their opinion, it degrades the independence of Belarus “by an ungrounded reference to Russia”. Besides, the Swedish often confuse the Belarusians with the Russians due to such a name.

The activists of the campaign turn attention to the fact this question on official change of the country’s name from Vitryssland to Belarus was raised by Swedish MP Urban Alin in 1996. The Swedish Language Committee founded this offer ungrounded earlier and didn’t support it.