The origin of the word
Slav remains controversial. Excluding the ambiguous mention by
Ptolemy of tribes
Stavanoi and
Soubenoi, the earliest references of "Slavs" under this name are from the 6th century AD. The word is written variously as
Sklabenoi,
Sklauenoi, or
Sklabinoi in
Byzantine Greek, and as
Sclaueni,
Sclauini, or
Sthlaueni in
Latin. The oldest documents written in
Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest
slověne to describe the Slavs around Thessalonica. Other early attestations include Old Russian
slověně "an East Slavic group near Novgorod",
Slovutich "Dnieper river", and
Serbo-Croatian Slavonica, a river.
Scholars such as
Roman Jacobson and others link the name with the Slavic forms
slбva "glory", "fame" or
slovo "word, talk" (both akin to
slusati "to hear" from the
IE root
*kleu-). Thus
slověne would mean "people who speak (the same language)", i.e. people who understand each other, as opposed to the Slavic word for foreign nations,
nemtsi, meaning "speechless people" (from Slavic
němi -
mute, silent, dumb). For example, the Polish word
Niemcy means "Germans" or "Germany", as do the Serbo-Croatian word
Nemci/
Nijemci and the Bulgarian word
Nemtsi.
Historical distribution of the Slavic languages. The area shaded in light purple is the Prague-Penkov-Kolochin complex of cultures of the 6th to 7th c. AD, likely corresponding to the spread of Slavic tribes at the time. The area shaded in darker red indicates the core area of Slavic river names (after
en:EIEC, pp.524-526)
Slavs are customarily divided into three major subgroups: East Slavs, West Slavs, and South Slavs, each with a different and a diverse background based on unique history, religion and culture of particular Slavic group within them. The
East Slavs may all be traced to Slavic-speaking populations that were loosely organized under the
Kievan Rus' empire beginning in the 10th century A.D. Almost all of the
South Slavs can be traced to ethnic Slavs who mixed with the local population of the
Balkans (
Illyrians,
Dacians/
Getae) and with later invaders from the East (
Bulgars,
Avars, and
Alans), then fell under the hegemony of the
Ottoman Empire. The
West Slavs and
Slovenians do not share either of these backgrounds, as they expanded to the West and integrated into the cultural sphere of Western (Roman Catholic) Christianity around this timeframe.
In addition there has been a tendency to consider the category of
Northern Slavs. Presently this category is considered to be of East and West Slavs, in opposition to South Slavs, however in 19th century opinions about individual languages/ethnicities varied.
Please note that some of the following subdivisions remain highly debatable, particularly for smaller groups and national minorities.
кај постои некоја година порано од 500 мислам дека нема се до 500 словените биле во Украина и во останатиот дел на европа.
