Zemli

Zemli is a Slavic term most commonly encountered as the transliteration of the Cyrillic Земли. In Russian, Zemli is the nominative plural of zemlya (земля) and is usually translated as “lands” or “earths.” The form Zemli appears in historical or literary contexts to refer to geographic regions or to the surface of the planet in a collective sense. In modern usage, zemli can denote territories or soils.

Origin and cognates: Zemli derives from Proto-Slavic *zemlja, meaning ground or soil. It is cognate with other Slavic words for land or earth, such as Polish ziemia/ziemie and Czech země, sharing the same semantic field across languages.

Usage in literature and culture: The word is used in poetry and historical writing to evoke homeland, realm, or territorial extent, for example in phrases like “the lands of our ancestors.” In contemporary contexts, it can refer to multiple territories within a country or to the soil in agrarian discussions.

See also: Zemlya; Earth in Slavic languages.