Comment by thaumasiotes

I think the best shot a modern Anglophone has at knowing the word is that it was used in Dracula for the title of Vlad the Impaler. [Voivode, that is, not voivodeship. But if you know the title voivode, the meaning of voivodeship is obvious.]

It is not immediately obvious why the word would have been adopted into English in more or less the native form as opposed to being translated into an equivalent title, the way we talk about German "dukes" and "duchies".