Constellation names in Ukrainian translations of the Bible

The article explores the names of The Great Bear, Orion and the star constellation of Pleiades in the eight full translations of the Bible into the Ukrainian language of XIX–XXI c. Besides the Introduction and the Brief summary of the Ukrainian translations history, the article is made up of three sections. In the first section we analyze the ancient Hebrew names, such as Ash, Kima and Kesil, which are found in the translation by Patriarch Philaret (Denysenko) of the Synodic Bible (1876), and also in the New World Translation, made by the religious society “Jehovah’s Witnesses”. The second chapter focuses on the folk Ukrainian names, also typical for the whole Slavic world, such as Viz, Volosozhar, Kvochka, Kosari, used in the first full translation of the Bible into Ukrainian — Kulish᾽s Bible, which, by its authority, has created a certain tradition, proclaiming the authenticity and comprehensiveness of the Ukrainian language, and has become the standard, later followed by Ivan Ogiyenko and Ivan Khomenko. The third section is dedicated to such Graecisms as Pleiads, Orion, Arcturus, being equivalents for the nominations, presented in the protograph Septuaginta, found in the translation by Father Raphael. The author comes to the conclusion that all the translators in their clerical work aimed to make the astronomic names available and understandable to the orthodox reader of the biblical texts, but for each period of time this aim was achieved differently: if for the XIX century such understandable ones were folk names, in XX and XXI centuries they have been forgotten and replaced by the more familiar Greek-originated and common The Great Bear, Orion and Pleiads. This concerns also the translation of the Ostrog Bible, whose astronomic names had been formed in the times of the first Slavic enlighteners Cyril and Methodius and have become too archaic for our times. The author states that different ethno-cultures have been reflected in the astronomical names: Judaic cosmonymy is more of the anthropomorphic character, while Slavic, including the Ukrainian one, reflects the villatic view to the world and the sky of stars.