A Regional Heritage Linked Through Speech
[Slav]
RUSSIA’S INVASION OF Ukraine pits two countries sharing a Slavic heritage against each other. In his rhetoric leading up to the war, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin cynically exploited this shared heritage to claim that three Slavic national groups—Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians—are all part of a “triune nation,” justifying his expansionist goals.
With Slavic identity so violently contested, it is worth stepping back to consider where the “Slavic” label comes from.
The terms “Slav” and “Slavic” have historically referred to groups sharing a common ethnolinguistic background. Present- day Slavic languages can be traced back to a common ancestral language that historical linguists call “Proto-Slavic.” Scholars place the homeland for Proto-Slavic in the present-day lands of eastern Poland and western Ukraine.
Starting around 500 A.D., Slavic speakers dispersed in all directions from this homeland. The language family now encompasses three main branches: East Slavic (including Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian), West Slavic (including Polish, Czech and Slovak), and South Slavic (including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian).
The term “Slav” goes back to a Byzantine Greek term for their Balkan neighbors, “sklabos” (pronounced “sclavos”). The Greek label in turn came from Slavs’ own name for themselves, “Slověne” (still retained in the name of the country Slovenia). Etymologists relate this name to the Slavic term “slovo,” which can mean “word” or “speech”— suggesting that from early on, the designation referred to people speaking the same language or at least closely related language varieties. These days, we often see the Ukrainian nationalist slogan “Slava Ukraini,” meaning “Glory to Ukraine,” but that “slava” doesn’t actually have an etymo- logical connection to “Slav.” The word “slava” meaning “fame” or “glory” in many Slavic languages (and found at the end of names like “Miroslav”) goes back to an unrelated root.
The words “Slav” and “slave,” on the other hand, do share a historical linkage, according to most scholarly accounts. As Yale classics professor Noel Lenski explained in a recent article on slavery in the Byzantine Empire, the Greek term for Slavs, “sklabos,” started to be used with a meaning akin to “slave” in written sources around the 11th century. “Latins, Greeks and Arabs profited from political and military instability in the region through the steady influx of captive Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Bulgars,” Prof. Lenski writes. Greek “sklabos,” Latin “sclavus” and Arabic “saqaliba” all referred to subjugated Slavs before becoming more generic labels for enslaved people. Some question the “Slav”/ “slave” connection, however. Anatoly Liberman, a Russianborn etymologist teaching at the University of Minnesota, suggests that Byzantine Greek “sklabos” for Slavic people happened to resemble a pre-existing word for slaves, which he surmises comes from the Greek root “skylon” meaning “spoils of war.”
The Latin version, “sclavus,” transformed into “sclave” in medieval French, the source of English “slave.” In the language of the Venetians, meanwhile, it became “sciavo” or “s-ciao,” and was used in the expression “sciao vostro,” roughly meaning “I am your humble servant.” That eventually got shortened into the Italian pleasantry, “ciao.”
Regardless of any bygone historical kinship to “slave” and related words in other languages, “Slav” and “Slavic” have long been terms of ethnic pride. In the 19th century, the “pan-Slavism” movement sought to unify Slavic people who had been ruled by many empires.
Mr. Putin’s efforts to bring “brother Slavs” in Belarus and Ukraine under Russian dominion, however, runs roughshod over those countries’ sovereign borders, ignoring their distinct national and linguistic identities. In Ukraine, Russian appeals to a common Slavic heritage are being answered with a resolute cry of “Slava Ukraini!”
WORD ON THE STREET
BEN ZIMMER
