Tavriia. The ancient Greek name for the territory inhabited by the Taurians was Taurica. From the 16th century the term Tavriia, a Slavic derivative of the Greek name, was widely used for the Crimean Peninsula. From the beginning of the 19th century the term was used to refer to the Crimea and the adjacent steppes north of it, which area constituted Tavriia gubernia until the 1920s.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]