What impact did Slavic Ukraine, Crimea, and the black sea region receive from its former Iranian (Iranic?) populace?

by karmadon

Is there any cultural traits, words or admixture believed to have come from the Scythian or other related peoples? How were they Slavicized? .

Inkshooter

There was little to no overlap in the periods during which the Scythians occupied Crimea and the Slavs eventually came during the period of the Kievan Rus' (and even then, Slavic influence was brief and relatively minor until Russia annexed Crimea outright in 1783 and Russian settlers started pouring in.)

The Greeks, Crimean Goths, Khazars, and Crimean Tatars all occupied the peninsula at different times before the Russian Empire gained control of it, all of whom had long since assimilated and wiped away the Scythian ethnicity, culture, and language in Crimea.

That doesn't mean their influence is completely gone, however. The Ossetian language spoken in the Caucasus mountains in Russia and Georgia is directly derived from the Scythian language.

z2210558

You might notice that many of the rivers that flow into the Black sea share the "Dn" pattern: Don, Donets, Dniester, Dnieper, Danube (and apparently others flowing into the Baltic). This is believed to come from the word "danu" meaning "river" in the Iranian language spoken by the Scythians.

It's an interesting fact that the toponymy of a region can often outlive the language of the people who named everything, especially when there is a gradual language shift, for example Celtic names persisting in (Anglo-Saxon) Britain.