Posted: 4/2/2015
Only recently it dawned on me on the first time in my life how much the terms Prussia and Russia resemble each other as a bilingual person (native German). The German terms are Preussen und Russland. Thus, my native language has until now overpowered my English language cognition as far as these two terms are concerned.
It was the celebration of the 200th birthday of famous Otto von Bismarck (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), which has been honored by a series of articles in various media, some of which I read when it finally occurred to me how similar the English terms Prussia and Russia are.
This is what the online etymology dictionary had to say:
“Prussia (n.)
from Medieval Latin Borussi, Prusi, Latinized forms of the native name of the Lithuanian people who lived in the bend of the Baltic before being conquered 12c. and exterminated by (mostly) German crusaders who replaced them as the inhabitants. Perhaps from Slavic *Po-Rus "(The Land) Near the Rusi" (Russians). ...”
Perhaps that explains to some extent the German affinity to Russia as again observe in the positive reaction of significant numbers of Germans about the Russian incursion into Ukraine.
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