In historiography, it is accepted that the heir to the throne of the Bulgarian Prince Boris the First was called Vladimir. Turning to historical sources, however, shows that this name is not recorded in any of them until the end of the 11th century. The name Vladimir is a more or less arbitrary reconstruction based on a number of assumptions. It is very likely that the initial name of the first son of Prince Boris, about which the historical sources do not provide unambiguous information, was proto-Bulgarian in origin and generally compatible with the nomenclature of attested proto-Bulgarian names with which history is familiar. This name, unknown to us, could have gradually been etymologized and generalized to Vladimir on Byzantine-Slavic soil.
