Slavs (ethnonym)

Sporoi (Greek: Σπόροι) or Spori was according to Eastern Roman scholar Procopius (500–560) the old name of the Antes and Sclaveni, two Early Slavic branches. Procopius stated that the Sclaveni and Antes spoke the same language, but he did not trace their common origin back to the Veneti (as per Jordanes) but to a people he called Sporoi.[1] He derived the name from Greek σπείρω ("I scatter grain"), because "they populated the land with scattered settlements".[2] He described their society as democratic, and their language as barbaric.[3]

Roman bureaucrat Jordanes wrote about the Slavs in his work Getica (551): "although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni" (ab una stirpe exorti, tria nomina ediderunt, id est Veneti, Antes, Sclaveni); that is, the West Slavs, East Slavs, and South Slavs.[4] 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.[5] Jordanes' Veneti and Procopius' Sporoi were used for the ethnogenetic legend of the Slavs, the ancestors of the Slavs (the subsequent ethnic group name).[6]

Thus, the Slav ethnonym at first denoted the southern group of the early Slavs. This ethnonym is attested by Procopius in Byzantine Greek as Σκλάβοι (Skláboi), Σκλαβηνοί (Sklabēnoí), Σκλαυηνοί (Sklauēnoí), Σθλαβηνοί (Sthlabēnoí), or Σκλαβῖνοι (Sklabînoi),[7] while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the Sclaveni in Latin.[8] 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").[9]

In East Church Slavonic manuscripts, the ethnonym is spelt Slověne (Словѣне), such as in the Primary Chronicle, Sofia First Chronicle, Novgorod First Chronicle and Novgorod Fourth Chronicle.[10] 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' society, alongside Varangians, Chuds and Kriviches).[11]

The Slavic autonym *Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo "word", originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)", i. e. people who understand each other, in contrast to the Slavic word denoting "foreign people", namely němci, meaning "mumbling, murmuring people" (from Slavic *němъ "mumbling, mute"). The latter word may be the derivation of words to denote "Germans" or "Germanic peoples" in many later Slavic languages: e. g., Czech Němec, Slovak Nemec, Slovene Nemec, Belarusian, Russian and Bulgarian Немец, Serbian Немац, Croatian Nijemac, Polish Niemiec, Ukrainian Німець, etc.,[12] but another theory states that rather these words are derived from the name of the Nemetes tribe,[13][14] which is derived from the Celtic root nemeto-.[15][16]

The word slovo ("word") and the related slava ("glory, fame, praise") and slukh ("hearing") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew- ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek κλέος (kléos "fame"), whence comes the name Pericles, Latin clueo ("be called"), and English loud.

Alternative 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", and from that evolved into an ethnonym.[17] S. B. Bernstein speculated that it derives from a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European *(s)lawos, cognate to Ancient Greek λαός (laós) "population, people", which itself has no commonly accepted etymology.[18] Meanwhile, others theorize that Slavyane (Russian: Славяне) is of toponymic origin, from a place named Slovo or a river named Slova;[19] this, according to some, is implied by the suffix -enin. The Old East Slavic Slavuta for the Dnieper River was argued by Henrich Bartek (1907–1986) to be derived from slova and also the origin of Slověne.[20]

The English term slave derives from the ethnonym Slav. In medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved, which led to the word slav becoming synonym to "enslaved person".[21] In addition, the English word Slav derives from the Middle English word sclave, which was borrowed from Medieval Latin sclavus or slavus,[22] itself a borrowing and Byzantine Greek σκλάβος sklábos "slave," which was in turn apparently derived from a misunderstanding of the Slavic autonym (denoting a speaker of their own languages). The Byzantine term Sklavinoi was loaned into Arabic as Saqaliba (صقالبة; sing. Saqlabi, صقلبي) by medieval Arab historiographers. However, the origin of this word is disputed.[23][24]

The popular Italian-language (and international) salutation Ciao is derived from the word.[25][26]

• Sclaveni
• Sporoi

• Bačić, Jakov (1987). "Slav: the Origin and Meaning of the Ethnonym". Slovene Studies Journal. 9 (1): 33–42.
• Kunstmann, Heinrich (1996). Die Slaven. Ihr Name, ihre Wanderung nach Europa und die Anfänge der russischen Geschichte in historisch-onomastischer Sicht. Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 978-3-515-06816-1.
• Loma, Aleksandar (2008). "*РечЬ, *слово, *беседа - етимологија и семантичка праисторија" (PDF). Јужнословенски филолог. 64: 199–216.
• Łukaszewicz, Adam (1998). "De Sclavinis et sclavis…". Dialogues d'histoire ancienne (in French). 24 (2): 129–135.
• Maher, J. Peter (1974). "The Ethnonym of the Slavs – Common Slavic *slověne". The Journal of Indo-European Studies. 2: 143–155.
• Trubachev, Oleg Nikolaevich (1974). "Rannie slavyanskie etnonimy — svideteli migratsii slavyan" [The early Slavic ethnonyms — the evidence of the Slavic migrations]. Voprosy yazykoznaniya. 6: 48–67.
• Uličný, Ferdinant (2012). "ETNONYMY SKLÁVOI, SCLAVI, SLOVIENI, SLOVÁCI, SLOVANIA". Historický časopis. 60 (2): 301–330. ISSN 0018-2575.