Abstract

The etymology of the words “місто, город, Stadt, town, burg, urbs, polis“ and “civitas“ is considered in the article. All of them, except last, have protoIndo-European etymological roots, which means “fence, enclosure, fortified settlement“, as well as “houses, courtyards, farm and family life in this settlement“ or “culture“ in general. Accordingly, cultural universalias are also reflected in the sense that were associated with the city. We may see the vital universalia in the sense that fixed the economic and family life. Category «life» here was codified by the nutritional code as joint cooking, and by the reproductive code as family life with mutual love. The mortal cultural category is denied by the fortification walls of the city, which at the first time were considered such its main feature. Derivatives of some of these words became the words, which were denoting the inhabitants of these fortress cities. With the development of the socio-political system, these words acquired a class meaning. So, at first the most important feature of the city wеre a defensive walls, then – that it is a closed place for dwelling, and later – that it is a communicative political community of citizens. In this way, words denoting a particular class became etymons for words that began to designate the city as a political communication system. In contrast, civitas was formed as semiotic term, originating from the naming of cives of the physical city, who enjoyed the most political rights. In turn, the derivatives of these words were the words civilization, civil etc. Thus, in one case the word «citizen» was formed from the word «city», in the other case the word «city» was formed from the word «citizen». Thus, the study found that at first the key feature of the city was that it was a fortified settlement, and then that it was the center of the political and legal life of society with its leading role in the development of the state compared to the village in most cases. On the contrary, in the Ukrainian community, the center of legal regulation was concentrated in the village, while the cities were populated mainly by colonialist. That is why ukr. «mіstsyanin» did not get the value of a citizen. An analogue of the word «citizen» has become the ukr. word «hromadjany“n» as a representative of a rural сommon, community of Gemeinschaft type.