Let’s not dwell too deep though. The name Okraina ("Borderland"') was used for Russia's southern border. The oldest recorded mention of the word ukraina dates to the year 1187. It was used sporadically from the mid-17th century until it was reintroduced in the 19th century by several writers making a conscious effort to awaken Ukrainian national awareness. It was only in the 20th century when the modern term Ukraine started to prevail.
Historically, Little Russia (Malorossiya) was the geographical and historical term used to describe Ukraine. Since 1334, Yuri II Boleslav, the ruler of the Ruthenian Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, signed his decrees Natus dux totius Russiæ minoris, but the expression MikrĂ¡ RosĂa is found as early as 1292, in the Byzantine writer Codinus.
In the post-medieval period, the name Little Rus' was first used by the Eastern Orthodox clergy of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The term has been applied to all Orthodox Ruthenian lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.] Vyshensky addressed "the Christians of Little Russia, brotherhoods of Lviv and Vilna," and Kopystensky wrote "Little Russia, or Kiev and Lithuania."
The term was adopted in the 17th century by the Tsardom of Russia to refer to the Cossack Hetmanate of Left-bank Ukraine, when the latter fell under Russian protection after the Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654).
From 1654 to 1721, the official title of Russian tsars contained the language (literal translation) "The Sovereign of all Rus': the Great, the Little, and the White."
The term Little Rus' has been used in letters of the Cossack Hetmans Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Ivan Sirko.
Innokentiy Gizel, Archimandrite of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, wrote that the Russian people were a union of three branches—Great Russia, Little Russia, and White Russia—under the sole legal authority of the Moscow Tsars. The term Little Russia has been used in Ukrainian chronicles by Samiilo Velychko, in a chronicle of the Hieromonk Leontiy (Bobolinski), and in Thesaurus by Archimandrite Ioannikiy (Golyatovsky).
The usage of the name was later broadened to apply loosely to the parts of Right-bank Ukraine when it was annexed by Russia at the end of the 18th century upon the partitions of Poland.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Russian Imperial administrative units known as the Little Russian Governorate and eponymous General Governorship were formed and existed for several decades before being split and renamed in subsequent administrative reforms.
Up to the very end of the 19th century, Little Russia was the prevailing term for much of the modern territory of Ukraine controlled by the Russian Empire, as well as for its people and their language. This can be seen from its usage in numerous scholarly, literary and artistic works.
Ukrainophile historians Mykhaylo Maksymovych, Mykola Kostomarov, Dmytro Bahaliy, and Volodymyr Antonovych acknowledged the fact that during the Russo-Polish wars, Ukraine had only a geographical meaning, referring to the borderlands of both states, but Little Russia was the ethnonym of Little (Southern) Russian people. In his prominent work Two Russian nationalities, Kostomarov uses Southern Rus and Little Russia interchangeably. Mykhailo Drahomanov titled his first fundamental historic work Little Russia in Its literature (1867–1870).
Different prominent artists (e.g., Mykola Pymonenko, Kostyantyn Trutovsky, Nikolay Aleksandrovich Sergeyev, photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, etc.), many of whom were native to the territory of modern-day Ukraine, used Little Russia in the titles of their paintings of Ukrainian landscapes.
The term Little Russian language was used by the state authorities in the first Russian Empire Census, conducted in 1897.