Burkaniv had its name in 1497, 67 years before its “first mention”

The entry, as printed

Nblis. Nicolaus Dimidala ex parte Dorothee et Barbare sororibus heredibus de Zlothnyky dabat pecunias et ponebat nbli. Zophie heredi de Zlothnyky consorti nblis. Stanislai Czudzynowski quas pecunias Zophia habet inscriptas in medietate Burkanow, quod dnis. Iudici et Subiudici est protestatus ipse Dimidala.

In English

The noble Mikołaj Dimidała, on behalf of the sisters Dorota and Barbara, heiresses of Zolotnyky, paid and laid down money for the noble Zofia, heiress of Zolotnyky, wife of the noble Stanisław Czudzynowski: money which Zofia holds secured on half of Burkanów. Dimidała himself declared this before the judge and the deputy judge.

Two stories about one name

Almost every village has a story about where its name came from. Burkaniv has two. The first is the official one: the village was first mentioned in 1564, when it was called Kut, “because it lay in a corner, out of the way”, and took its present name only in the 18th century. The second is a legend: the Tatars were ravaging the countryside, but Khan Burk, enchanted by the village, ordered it spared and asked to live there among the people. The villagers built him a castle and named the village after him.

The old court books tell a third story. In it Burkaniv appears under its own name seventy years before its “first mention”.

What a land book was

At the end of the 15th century Burkaniv lay in Terebovlia district of the Halych land. The affairs of the nobility there went before the land court in Halych. The judge and his deputy met several times a year, and a clerk entered their rulings, in Latin, into the land book. To have something written in that book was to make it public and binding: a debt, a dowry, a sale, the division of an inheritance.

The Galician books that have come down to us were kept in Lviv and printed between 1868 and 1935 in the 25 volumes of the “Akta grodzkie i ziemskie”. Our record is in volume XIX, published in 1906.

May 1497: three heiresses

On the Monday after Trinity Sunday, 22 May 1497, the land court in Halych dealt with several matters of one family, the heiresses of neighbouring Zolotnyky. First came Barbara of Zolotnyky and an entry kept in the Terebovlia land book. Then came the short note that brought us here.

A nobleman, Mikołaj Dimidała, on behalf of the sisters Dorota and Barbara, brought money and laid it before the court for their kinswoman Zofia, another heiress of Zolotnyky and wife of the nobleman Stanisław Czudzynowski. That money, the clerk explains, Zofia held “inscribed on half of Burkanów”.

What “half of Burkanów” means

In those days a village was not only a place where people lived but also capital. It was divided into shares among heirs, given as a dowry, pledged against a loan. To “inscribe” money on a village was to secure it there: if the debt was not paid, the creditor would take the income of that part of the village.

So in 1497 half of Burkaniv served as security in the family accounts of the owners of Zolotnyky. The village already existed, had owners, had a value, and was called exactly what it is called today. There is no Kut in the record. When Burkaniv arose, the document does not say. But nobody secures money on a freshly cleared plot: a village that could be split in half and pledged had existed for some time.

Where “Kut” came from

The tax register of 1564, usually cited as the first mention, is in print too: the historian Adolf Jabłonowski published it in 1902. Such registers were drawn up by tax collectors, who wrote down each village and the number of peasant households in it, because the tax was counted from that. In the register of Terebovlia district, between Zolotnyky and Budzaniv, three lines stand side by side:

Zolotnyky, 7 peasant households. Old Kut, 3 households. Burkanów, 12 households and a priest. So in 1564 Burkaniv was recorded under its own name, with twelve households and a priest, and beside it, on a separate line, stood the little Old Kut. “Kut”, a corner, is a common name for a hamlet on the edge of things. Early in the 19th century the hamlet of Kut was joined to Burkaniv, and very likely that is how a mention of Kut came to be read as the old name of the whole village. The document does not say outright that the register's Old Kut is that same hamlet, but the neighbouring lines point that way.

And Khan Burk?

Legends about the origin of a name are found in hundreds of villages, and they were usually made up later to explain a name that already existed. The documents can neither confirm nor refute that a khan called Burk ever lived here. But they set a limit: by the end of the 15th century the name Burkanów already existed. If the legend remembers anything, it remembers something older still.

What happened to the village before 1497 is not yet known: the Terebovlia land books of that time are not in the edition. The next step is the other volumes of the Halych and Lviv books, where Zolotnyky and its owners appear more often.

Sources

• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XIX (Lwów, 1906), p. 275, no. 1496 (22.05.1497).
• A. Jabłonowski, Źródła dziejowe, vol. XVIII, part 1 (Warsaw, 1902), p. 99: the 1564 register of Terebovlia district.

© 2026 Vadym Ratynskyi. All rights reserved. The research, text and translations on this page may be copied or republished only with the author's permission. To ask for permission, write to hello@ukrainianhomecoming.com.