The first known record of the name of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuva) is in a 9 March 1009 story

of Saint Bruno in the Quedlinburg Chronicle.[13] The Chronicle recorded a Latinized form of the
name Lietuva: Litua[14] (pronounced [litua]). Due to the lack of reliable evidence, the true
meaning of the name is unknown. Nowadays, scholars still debate the meaning of the word and
there are a few plausible versions.

Since the word Lietuva has a suffix (-uva), the original word should have no suffix. A likely
candidate is Lietā. Because many Baltic ethnonyms originated from hydronyms, linguists have
searched for its origin among local hydronyms. Usually such names evolved through the
following process: hydronym → toponym → ethnonym.[15] Lietava, a small river not far from
Kernavė, the core area of the early Lithuanian state and a possible first capital of the eventual
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is usually credited as the source of the name.[15] However, the river is
very small and some find it improbable that such a small and local object could have lent its
name to an entire nation. On the other hand, such a naming is not unprecedented in world
history.[16]

Artūras Dubonis' proposed another hypothesis,[17] that Lietuva relates to the word *leičiai (plural
of leitis). From the middle of the 13th century, leičiai were a distinct warrior social group of the
Lithuanian society subordinate to the Lithuanian ruler or the state itself. The word leičiai is used
in the 14–16th-century historical sources as an ethnonym for Lithuanians (but not Samogitians)
and is still used, usually poetically or in historical contexts, in the Latvian language, which is
closely related to Lithuanian.[18][19]