The Slavic ethnonym (and autonym), Slavs, is reconstructed in

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...

as ''*Slověninъ'', plural ''Slověne''. The earliest written references to the Slav ethnonym are in other languages.

Early mentions

Possibly the oldest mention of Slavs in almost historical form ''*Slověne'' is attested in

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

's ''

Geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

'' (2nd century) as ''Σταυανοί'' (Stavanoi) and ''Σουοβηνοί'' (Souobenoi), both listed as

Scythian The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC fr ...

tribes living near Alanians north of

Scythia Scythia (, ) or Scythica (, ) was a geographic region defined in the ancient Graeco-Roman world that encompassed the Pontic steppe. It was inhabited by Scythians, an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people. Etymology The names ...

(first roughly between

Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

and

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

, second between the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

and

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

). Zbigniew Gołąb accepted Pavel Jozef Šafárik's opinion that Greeks inserted "τ" or "θ" for Slavic "sl-" (reconstructing Proto-Slavic ''*Slɔu̯ǣnæ''), and "through the labialized articulation of the vowel /ɔ/ conditioned by the preceding /u̯/" in Proto-Slavic ''*Su̯ɔbǣnæ'' (''*Svoběne''). '' Sporoi'' () or ''Spori'' was according to Eastern Roman/Byzantine scholar

Procopius Procopius of Caesarea (; ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; ; – 565) was a prominent Late antiquity, late antique Byzantine Greeks, Greek scholar and historian from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman general Belisarius in Justinian I, Empe ...

(500–560) the old name of the Antes and

Sclaveni The ' (in Latin language, Latin) or ' (Sclaveni#Terminology, various forms in Greek language, Greek) were Early Slavs, early Slavic tribes that raided, invaded and settled in the Balkans in the Early Middle Ages and eventually became one of the p ...

, two Early Slavic branches. Procopius stated that the Sclaveni and Antes spoke the same language, but he traced their common origin back to not the Veneti (as per Jordanes) but a people that he called ''Sporoi''. He derived the name from Greek ("I scatter grain"), because "they populated the land with scattered settlements". He described their society as democratic, and their language as barbaric. The Roman bureaucrat

Jordanes Jordanes (; Greek language, Greek: Ιορδάνης), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, claimed to be of Goths, Gothic descent, who became a historian later in life. He wrote two works, one on R ...

wrote about the Slavs in his work ''

Getica ''De origine actibusque Getarum'' (''The Origin and Deeds of the Getae''), commonly abbreviated ''Getica'' (), written in Late Latin by Jordanes in or shortly after 551 AD, claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the ori ...

'' (551): "although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni" (); that is, the West Slavs, East Slavs, and South Slavs. He stated that the Veneti were the ancestors of the Sclaveni and the Antes, the two having used to be called ''Veneti'' but are now "chiefly" (though, by implication, not exclusively) called Sclaveni and Antes. Jordanes' ''Veneti'' and Procopius' ''Sporoi'' were used for the ethnogenetic legend of the Slavs, the ancestors of the ''Slavs'' (the subsequent ethnic group name). Thus, the Slav ethnonym at first denoted the southern group of the

early Slavs The early Slavs were speakers of Indo-European languages, Indo-European dialects who lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th centuries AD) in Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Ea ...

. That ethnonym is attested by Procopius in

Byzantine Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic; Greek: ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the F ...

as ('), ('), ('), ('), or Σκλαβῖνοι ('),Procopius, ''History of the Wars'', VII. 14. 22–30, VIII. 40. 5. while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the ''Sclaveni'' in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

.Jordanes, ''The Origin and Deeds of the Goths,'' V. 33. In Ancient Greek there are no words with the root ''sl-'', thus the original ethnonym was transformed into ''skl-'', as that root was present (in '' sklērós'', "hard").

Church Slavonic manuscripts

In East

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

manuscripts, the ethnonym is spelt ''Slověne'' (), such as in the ''

Primary Chronicle The ''Primary Chronicle'', shortened from the common ''Russian Primary Chronicle'' (, commonly transcribed ''Povest' vremennykh let'' (PVL), ), is a Rus' chronicle, chronicle of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110. It is believed to have been or ...

'', ''

Sofia First Chronicle The ''Sofia First Chronicle'' () is a Rus' chronicle from the 15th century associated with the Cathedral of St. Sophia, Novgorod. It is scholarly abbreviated as S1 or SPL. Its copies exist in two versions: Early Redaction (''starshy izvod''), whic ...

'', ''

Novgorod First Chronicle The Novgorod First Chronicle ( rus, Новгоро́дская пе́рвая ле́топись, Novgoródskaya pérvaya létopisʹ, nəvɡɐˈrot͡skəjə ˈpʲervəjə ˈlʲetəpʲɪsʲ, commonly abbreviated as NPL), also known by its 1914 Eng ...

'' and '' Novgorod Fourth Chronicle''. In the source dating to 898 included in the ''Primary Chronicle'', the term is used both for East Slavic tribes and more often for a people (in the

Kievan Rus' Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus,. * was the first East Slavs, East Slavic state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical At ...

society, alongside

Varangians The Varangians ( ; ; ; , or )Varangian
," Online Etymology Dictionary were

Chuds Chud or Chude (, , ) is a term historically applied in the early Old Russian chronicles, East Slavic annals to several Baltic Finnic peoples in the area of what is now Estonia, Karelia and Northwest Russia, Northwestern Russia. It has also been ...

and Kriviches).

Etymology

The origin of the Slavic autonym ''*Slověninъ'' is disputed. * According to Roman Jakobson's opinion, modified by Oleg Trubachev (Трубачёв) and John P. Maher,P. Maher (Chicago). 1970. The Etymology of Common Slavic ''slověne'' 'Slavs'. In: Балканско езикознание. Linguistique balkanique. volume 16. Issue 2. 1970. Sofia. Pp. 31–36 the name is related to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root seen in ''slovo'' ("word") and originally denoted "people who speak (the same language)", i.e. people who understand each other. The word ''slovo'' ("word") and the related ''slava'' ("glory, fame, praise") and ("hearing") originate from the PIE root ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek ( "fame"), whence comes the name

Pericles Pericles (; ; –429 BC) was a Greek statesman and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed ...

, Latin ("be called"), as well as English . * Another widely citedRejzek, Jiři. 2001. Český etymologický slovník. Leda. p.583 view is expressed by Max Vasmer, who points out that the suffix Proto-Slavic ''*-ěninъ'', ''*-aninъ'' otherwise seems to derive nouns only from toponyms; hence Vasmer assumes that this word, too, is derived from a toponym - probably a hydronym, comparable to various Slavic river names with the same apparent root such as Russian Слуя, Polish ''Sława'', ''Sławica'', Serbo-Croatian Славница, further related to Ancient Greek κλύζω 'lave', κλύζωει 'flow', κλύδων 'serf', Latin ''cluō'' 'to clean', ''cloāca'' 'sewer pipe'. According to this view, the connection to ''*slovo'' 'word' would be the result of a later folk etymology. It has been suggested that the word may be derived from a place named ''Slovo'' or a river named ''Slova''; this, according to some, is implied by the suffix ''-enin''. The

Old East Slavic Old East Slavic (traditionally also Old Russian) was a language (or a group of dialects) used by the East Slavs from the 7th or 8th century to the 13th or 14th century, until it diverged into the Russian language, Russian and Ruthenian language ...

''Slavuta'' for the

Dnieper River The Dnieper or Dnepr ( ), also called Dnipro ( ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately long, with ...

was argued by Henrich Bartek (1907–1986) to be derived from ''slova'' and also the origin of ''Slověne''.''Etudes slaves et est-européennes: Slavic and East-European studies'', vol. 3 (1958), p. 107. * Based on an uncertain identification with the ethnonym ''souоbēnoí'', which is mentioned in Ptolemy (2nd century AD), the name has been argued to be derived from Proto-Slavic adjective ''svobъ'' ("oneself", "one's own"; derivative ''svoboda'' > ''sloboda'' also meaning "freedom", "free settlement"), which derives from Indo-European ''*s(w)e/obh(o)-'' "a person or thing apart, separate", root ''*swobh'' "his/hers", meaning "all the members of an exogamic moiety > actual or potential affines/blood relatives". It can be interpreted as "a tribe of the free, of their own people". Names of many Germanic tribes derive from the same root, which was not an exonym but endonym. Name of sabini tribe also derive from root *swobʰ-. Eventually with dissimilation of ''svobъ'' > ''slobъ'' was secondarily associated with ''slovo'' "

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

". Other proposals for the etymology of ''*Slověninъ'' propounded by some scholars have much less support. B. Philip Lozinski argues that the word ''*slava'' once had the meaning of "worshipper", in this context "practicer of a common Slavic religion"; from that evolved into an ethnonym.B. Philip Lozinski, "The Name 'Slav'", in: ''Essays in Russian History. A Collection Dedicated to George Vernadsky'', edd. A. D. Ferguson and A. Levin. Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut 1964, S. 19–32
online text
). S. B. Bernstein speculated that it derives from a reconstructed

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

', cognate to

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

λαός (''laós'') "population, people", which itself has no commonly accepted etymology.Bernstein 1961. According to the widespread view known since 18th century, the English word

slave Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

, which arrived in modern language from

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

sclave, from

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th esclave, from Late wikt:esclave#fro">esclave, from Late sklave, from Medieval Latin">Middle High German wikt:sklave#gmh">sklave, from sclāvus, from Late Latin">Medieval Latin wikt:sclavus#Latin">sclāvus, from Sclāvus, from

Σκλάβος wikt:Σκλάβος#grc">Σκλάβος 'Sklábos''">wikt:Σκλάβος#grc">Σκλάβος [''Sklábos'' 'Sklábos'' [''Ésklabḗnos''">'Sklábos''">wikt:Σκλάβος#grc">Σκλάβος [''Sklábos'' [''Ésklabḗnos''and displaced native þēow, derives from Byzantine loanword from a Slavic gen self-name - Old English wikt:þeow#ang">þēow, derives from Byzantine loanword from a Slavic gen self-name - [''Sklábinoi'' [''Ésklabēnoí''">'Sklábinoi''">Old English wikt:þeow#ang">þēow, derives from Byzantine loanword from a Slavic gen self-name - [''Sklábinoi'' [''Ésklabēnoí'' that came to mean 'prisoner of war Slave', 'slave' (, , Late Latin ) in the 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved (see also Saqaliba). Similarly, the popular Italian-language (and international) salutation ''Ciao'' is also derived from that Slavic ethnonym. However, this version is disputed since the 19th century. An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that

Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...

via secondary form derives from Byzantine 'skūláō'', ''skyláō'' 'skūleúō'', ''skyleúō''- "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)", "to make booty / extract spoils of war". This version is criticised as well.

Early mentions

Church Slavonic manuscripts

Etymology

See also

References

Further reading