What is the meaning of the word "czar"?

The word “Czar”, albeit associated with Russia, is actually a word brought to us by Bulgarians. They called Czars their monarchs, starting from the 10th century. This was obviously derived from “Caesar”, as opposed to the Greek basileus.

When the Rurikids Christianized eastern Slavic tribes, our ancestors started using Old Bulgarian as the language of educated elite. Our Bible is written in Old Bulgarian. This is how we adopted the word Czar instead of the old Turkic Kagan.

Our first Czars were the rulers of the Turkic Empire of Jochi.

. When the power of the Volga Turks declined, in the 16th century a ruler of Muscovy decided to grab the title from the Chingizides. His name was Ivan the Terrible. He got crowned as a Czar in Moscow in 1547, i.e. six centuries after the first of Czars. Later, he conquered the Turkic kingdoms along the Volga in order to eliminate all possible competition.

However, the Chingizides in Crimea refused to acknowledge Muscovy’s claim to Czarist fame. Supported by the military might of the Ottomans who held Constantinople, the spiritual center of global Orthodox faith, the Crimeans kept claiming tributes from the Kremlin until 1700.

First when Peter the Great amassed enough military muscle, we wrestled Czardom from the Chingizides for good. However, Peter wasn’t totally comfortable with the title. It sounded too Oriental for him. Therefore he proclaimed himself emperor of Russia in 1721. After that, the heads of the House of Romanov used the titles of Czar and Emperor interchangeably.

Below is an iconic portrait of the first Czar Simeon I of Bulgaria.

. He started a long association of Czardom with bearded rulers, which was broken first by Peter the Great. Peter’s preference for cleanly shaved cheeks was however abandoned by Alexander III. Our last Czar Nicholas II, assassinated by the Bolsheviks, sported facial hair that stood in style with Simeon