"Voivode" word usage in modern English

Solution 1:

Collins and Merriam-Webster agree that the "common" spelling is vaivode, but that is to overstate: neither voivode nor vaivode are common in English, and most English-speakers will not be familiar with it unless they have greater than average knowledge about the history or geography of Central and Eastern Europe.

There are only two results for voivode in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, both from the same website about a television episode featuring Dracula, and none for vaivode. There is only one result for voivode in the slightly older British National Corpus, about Janos Hunyadi (coincidentally about Transylvania, if not Dracula).

I was not myself familiar with voivode, although I was aware of voivodeship being the word for a subdivision of Poland. As with terms like prefectures or Länder it may be used if the reader is expected to be familiar with the term, but for broader audiences will be translated as province, region, state, or so on as may be conventional.

Solution 2:

I was expecting to see zero results but there are some for voivode:

lengusa

And only one for vaivode:

lengusa

All of them are from Encyclopedia Britannica and seem to related to Balkans or Romania. Example:

When the Turks decisively defeated Hungary at the Battle of Mohács (1526), Transylvania effectively became independent. Its voivode John (János Zápolya), who was elected king of Hungary (November 1526), engaged Transylvania in a 12-year war against Ferdinand I, the Habsburg claimant to the Hungarian throne. Afterward Hungary was divided between the Habsburgs and the Turks, and Transylvania was transformed into an autonomous principality that was subject to Turkish suzerainty (1566). -- Encyclopedia Britannica

Solution 3:

You will find the word used in the trilogy With Fire and Sword by the Polish author Henryk Sienkowitz. This is the only place I ever met the word. It is a translation that retains the original form rather than using English alternatives. Therefore I cannot recommend using it in contemporary English without explanation.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Here it refers to an administrative area or province, the Voivodeship, whose leader is the Voivode.

It comes from Slavonic roots such as Russian Voina, war, and Vodit’, to lead. Hence the Voivode is the military, or partly military, leader of the province or voivodeship.