The Name SLAV*

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    The Name SLAV* 

B. Philip Lozinski (Essays in Russian History, Archon Books, 1964)

B. PHILIP LOZINSKI, Assistant Professor
of History at the University of Montreal, studied with Professor
Vernadsky as a graduate student at Yale University from 1947 through
1951. He received his Ph.D. in the History of Art there in 1958.
Earlier study was at the University of Warsaw and the University of
Grenoble. In 1949 he received the M.A. degree from Yale University. He
taught History of Art at Connecticut College in the summer of 1949, at
Yale during the academic year 1960-61, and at the University of British
Columbia in the summer of 1961. From 1947 through 1949 he was a
Research Assistant at the Yale Art Gallery and from 1957 through 1959
an Associate in Research in History at Yale. His fields of
specialization are Medieval, Iranian, and Slavic Art. His publications
include The Original Homeland of the Parthians (The Hague, 1959) and
numerous articles and book reviews in scholarly journals.

THE ORIGIN of the name Slav, Protoslavic Slovenin�, has never been
entirely satisfactorily explained. [1] All the bibliography pertaining
to the problem was published by Vasmer, Otrebski and Rudnickyj, [2] and
need not be repeated. The three main suggestions derive the name of the
Slavs from the following: from Slavic slovo, meaning "word," or slava,
meaning "glory," and from Latin sclavus, "slave." Etymological,
semantic and historical inconsistencies exist for each of these
explanations. Many attempts have been made to adjust one or the other
of the elements involved. For the details one may refer to the above
mentioned publications. 

In the present paper I shall suggest another explanation, not too far
removed from the solutions proposed hitherto, but based on evidence
other than philological considerations alone. The basis for deciphering
the meaning of any proper name should be looked for in its social
importance in the group using it, in the possible traditions and uses
of the name, and above all in the semantics and the cultural concepts
of the time rather than of our own period. 

Let us first examine the possible shortcomings of various extant explanations of the meaning of the name Slav. 

The derivation of this name from the word slovo meaning "word" is
illogical. A community of language could hardly be indicated by the
noun "word." For such a designation one would rather expect a word for
"language," or "speech" or any equivalent thereof. The only known use
of "word" as a symbolic designation refers to the "word" as Logos, or
to the Book. In such a case the name Slav would have religious
connotations. The term "word," as Logos, would be rather an exalted
name for a people who, to our knowledge, never had any crusading
religious drives, nor left any trace of a revealed religion in their
traditions, even if their religion was monotheistic. [3] We may,
however, retain the idea that religious connotations were, perhaps,
implicit in the name. 

The use of such a term as slava, "glory," for the proper name of a
population is entirely without parallel. It might conceivably have been
part of a dynastic title, but scarcely that of a group of nations,
whose written history does not contain sufficient evidence for such a
claim. 

As to the identification with the Latin sclavus, which in later
Medieval times seems to have been connected with the name of the Slavs,
[4] the difficulty is of a historical nature. No Roman sources contain the name "Slav" in any form.
It appears first in sixth-century Byzantine sources, written in Greek,
as "Sklavini." The Byzantines, historically, were the first to come in
contact with the migrating Slavs, recording their existence and their
name. The name was not given to them by the Greeks. The Byzantine
historians customarily recorded the foreign name of a population group
as the one used by the group itself, or as it was passed on by an
intermediary. We must remember that certain Slavic groups retained the
designation "Slav" as their proper name. These are the West Slavic
populations of the Slovaks and Slovenes, and the Eastern Slovieni of
Novgorod. We
may consider this sufficient proof that: the name was not borrowed by
the Slavs from Latin through Byzantine Greeks but must have been their
own. It is worth noting, however, that the name of the Slavs in Arabic, Saqlaba, seems to suggest Latin etymology from "sclavus." There
is also no historical evidence for the possibility that the Arabs
borrowed the name from the Latin-speaking populations, or from the
Byzantines.
Arabic records concerning the Slavs were, if not earlier, much more
ample and more accurate [5] than those of the Byzantine historians, who
were many months of travel distant from the Slavs according to the
earliest Byzantine reports. [6] The Arabs, who were in direct touch
with the Slavs, could hardly have borrowed the name from the
Byzantines. It is even less likely that they took it from the
Latin-speaking populations with whom they had for long no direct
contact as far as we know. The form of the name used by the Arabs, and
by the Byzantines, remains inexplicable. Only further studies may
establish the proper sequence, by tracing the linguistic groups through
which the name of the Slavs passed to emerge in Greek as Sklavini, and
in Arabic as Saqlaba. As a working hypothesis I might suggest that both
forms are derived from the same source. To derive one from the other
without additional supporting evidence would be premature, but we may
well suppose a common origin for both. It is possible that we have two
names of different origins applied to the same people: Slavs
(Slovenin") and Saqlaba. The Slavs would have been the name used by the
people themselves. The Saklaba, which is not an Arabic word
[7], does not derive from �Slav� or any other form thereof. More
probably it is a name connected with some region, later used to
designate the people who came to this area. [8] just as the name
Germani, originally Celtic, was applied to Teutonic populations when
they took over the same territory. [9] 

The proper name of the Slavs must have
been derived from a Slavic word, designating their most important
characteristic and distinguishing them from any other population group. It could not have been the name of the language, usually derived from the proper name of a population. The geographical [1
derivation seems tenuous, as such place names, although extant, are of
little importance. Moreover place names, when not topographical
descriptions, derive almost invariably from names of peoples, not
vice-versa. This is especially true for the first millenium A.D. as it
is attested by Stephanus Byzantinus. [11] The name of the Slavs might
have been taken from the name of a clan or a tribe, but here again we
have no historical evidence that such a clan or tribe ruled the whole
Slavic branch of nations at any time. [12] In any case their name must
have had some specific meaning before it became that of a family, clan
or tribe. We should look, then, for the meaning of the name "Slav" in
their language. 

The name of the Slavs, according to recent linguistic studies, derives
from the Indo-European root slov-, with a short vowel o. The
Proto-slavic form would, accordingly, have been Slovenin". The East
Slavic variation with a instead of o would, then, be a later
development, possibly connected with the Russian pronunciation of
unstressed o as a, the so-called akanie. This is considered to have
occurred in the XII-XIII century, although Vaillant [13] claimed that
it was extant already in the Common Slavic. Such variety of opinions
proves that not. all the linguistic definitions may claim general
support, and that all the reconstructions are hypothetical and subject
to change. They are far from being definite solutions, as our knowledge
of the early stages of the Slavic language is not satisfactory. Thus in
the preliterary period the form with a might have been current in the
East Slavic, which at the time stood Very close to the West Slavic. 

Slav � Slovenin" � is certainly a Slavic name and it came to other languages from Slavic.
The Western Europeans first encountered the Western Slavs, supposedly
using the form with o. And yet all the Western Europeans since the
tenth century used the form with a. As we know this a may have
represented as well the Slavic long a as the short o. The
first variation seems more probable, as it may have been supported by
the compound propoer names, such as Polish Boguslaw and Wladyslaw, or
Russian Sviatoslav, Iaroslav, etc. [13a], where the element � slav" presents us with a vowel a not o, both in Eastern and Western Slavic. 

I should like to present an alternate hypothesis, that the root of the original designation of the Slavs was rather slav than slov-, and to propose a different interpretation of the meaning of the name in terms of its semantic and historic raison d'etre. 

What were the strongest characteristics of an early society? Not the
nationality, as this modern concept did not exist in early societies;
not the language, as the name of the language would have been derived
from the name of the group, not vice-versa. The strongest were those of
religion which distinguished the group from all others, providing the
foundation of the whole cultural entity. 

In the first millenium A.D. the Christians of Europe were the
counterpart of the Mohammedans and the Buddhists of Asia; Jews formed a
group in terms of their religion not their speech, or their social or
"national" affinities. Other designations of peoples or states were
primarily those of the names of dynasties or of particular rulers. The
pagans, in turn, had their own definition of populations of other
religions, and, naturally, a name for their co-believers. Religious
interests were indeed of primary concern throughout the period. 

The name of the Slavs first emerged
during the second part of the first millennium A.D. The name may have
had religious connotations, meaning, or value.
The tradition of a religious designation of people has survived among
the Slavs until the present. In Eastern Poland and Western Russia only
the educated distinguished themselves or others according to their
national or linguistic affiliations. In popular usage the national
names of Poles, White Russian, or Ukrainians are nonexistent.
"National" differences were, and still are, expressed in terms of
religion: Catholic meaning Polish, and orthodox, pravoslavny, used as
the equivalent of Russian, Ukrainian, Small Russian, or White Russian. 