Word.ws English Dictionary

Tmutarakan

Tmutarakan proper noun: a medieval Kievan Rus' principality and trading town located on the Taman Peninsula.

Proper noun

Tmutarakan

  1. (historical) A medieval Kievan Rus' principality and trading town located on the Taman Peninsula.

Origin of Tmutarakan

Borrowed from Russian Тмутарака́нь (Tmutarakánʹ), which is from the Byzantine Ancient Greek Ταμάταρχα (Tamátarkha). The Greek toponym is likely of Adyghe origin, deriving from the local native name West Circassian Тамэтӏаркъу (Tamɛtʼarqʷu). The Russian spelling is the result of a folk etymology that altered the word to fit the native Russian words тьма (tʹma, “darkness”) and тарака́н (tarakán, “cockroach”) (literally "dark cockroach").

Questions about Tmutarakan

What does Tmutarakan mean?
Tmutarakan means a medieval Kievan Rus' principality and trading town located on the Taman Peninsula.
What part of speech is Tmutarakan?
Tmutarakan is a proper noun.

Words near Tmutarakan in the dictionary

  1. TMT
  2. TMTD
  3. TMTG
  4. TMTOWTDI
  5. TMU
  6. Tmutarakan
  7. TMVS
  8. tmw
  9. TMZ
  10. TMZs
  11. tn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tmutarakan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Tmutarakan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tmutarakan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.