Gevini
Γηουινοί
Eth. Gevini (Γηουινοί), mentioned by Ptolemy as a population of European Sarmatia (3.5.24) lying to the north of the Carpiani, and the south of the Bodini (Βωδινοί). Buchowinia is as likely a place as any for these Gevini. The name of this locality is generally deduced from Buch==Beech-tree, so that it==the land of the beeches. But the word Buch is German; whereas Buchowinia is Slavonic. Now if we allow ourselves to suppose the root gevin to be a geographical term (i. e. the name of a tract of land), we have a better derivation. No habit is commoner with the Slavic populations than to prefix to a noun denoting a locality the preposition po (bo)==on. Hence Po-morania is the country on the sea: a population on the Elbe (in Slavonic, Laba) was called the Po-labingi. As examples of this kind may be multiplied, the hypothesis that the Buchowinia is the country of the population on the Gevin (po-gevin) becomes allowable.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.