What the Deep South and the former USSR have in common.

Noreen Malone, Slate.com

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Painting by Gustave Moreau depicting Saint George slaying the dragon.

The Web site of the president of Georgia was temporarily moved to servers based in Atlanta, Georgia, over the weekend (Aug 16-17), after what appeared to be an attack by Russian hackers. The move was overseen by a Georgian-born executive at a technology company based in Georgia (the state), who happened to be on vacation in Georgia (the country) when the fighting started. Why does a country that was formerly part of the USSR have the same name as a state in the American Deep South?

Both got their present-day monikers from the British. The name of the country comes from the Russian word Gruzia, which was in turn derived from the Persian and Turkish versions of the name George, Gorj and Gurju. It's not clear when the Brits started using the word Georgia in place of Gruzia, but scholars believe the switch happened sometime in the late Middle Ages.

In their native tongue, Georgians refer to themselves as the Kartveli and to their country as Sakartvelo. But the Kartveli have for many centuries been associated with George, the Roman soldier and Christian martyr.
(They adopted Christianity under Roman rule in the 330s.) The Arabs,
Ottomans, and Persians—who ruled over the country at various times
until the Russians took control in 1801—chose to name Sakartvelo after
its beloved patron saint, whose image dotted the art and architecture
of the region.

More...