People with name Sirbi near the estuary of the river Volga, on Ptolemaic map from 1552.
People with name Sirbi near the estuary of the river Volga, on Ptolemaic map from 1598.
People with name Serbi (Серби) near the estuary of the river Volga, according to the map from the book of Jovan Rajić, printed in Vienna in 1794.
Migration of White Serbs to the Balkans
According to
White Serbs" who lived on the "other side of Turkey" (name used for Hungary), in the area that they called "Boiki" (Bohemia). White Serbia bordered to the Franks and White Croatia. DAI claims that after two brothers inherited the rule from their father, one of them took half of the people and migrated to the Byzantine Empire (i.e. to the Balkans), which was governed by Emperor Heraclius (610-641).[12][13][14] According to German historian Ludwig Albrecht Gebhardi, the two brothers were sons of Dervan, the dux (duke) of the Surbi (Sorbs).[15] Another part of the White Serbs did not migrate southwards, but remained in the Elbe region. Descendants of these White Serbs are the present day Lusatian Serbs (Sorbs), who still live in the Lusatia (Lužica, Lausitz) region of eastern Germany. There are also opinions that data from "De administrando imperio" that describes Serb migration to the Balkans is not correct and that Serbs came to the Balkans from Eastern Slavic lands, together with other South Slavs.[16][17]
In the
Byzantine population consisting from different people and tribes. Over time, the South Slavic mixed with the Serbs and also adopted Serb name as their own.[18][19]
The Emperor
Asia Minor. There these migrants founded the city of Gordoservon, the name of which gives grounds for supposing that among its founders there were Serbs, and was also known under names Gordoserbon and Servochoria.[20]
Theories
Iranian theory
Theory about Iranian origin of the Serb ethnonym assumes that ancient
Deformed human skulls that are connected to the Alans are also discovered in the area that was later designated as "White Serbia".[22][24] According to Indo-European interpretation, different sides of the World are designated with different colors, thus, white color is a designation for the west, black color for the north, blue or green color for the east and red color for the south. According to that view, White Serbia and White Croatia were designated as western Serbia and western Croatia, and were situated in the west from some hypothetical lands that had same names and that presumably existed in the east.[25]
Venethi but to a people he called "Sporoi".[28] He derived the name to Greek σπείρω ("I scatter grain"), because "they populated the land with scattered settlements".[29] According to Bohemian historian Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829) and Slovak historian Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1795–1861) it was a corruption of Srbi (Serbs).[citation needed] Šafárik deemed that it was the oldest generic name of the Slavs.[30]
In the mid-9th century the so-called
Slavic peoples originated from there (or from them).[31][32] According to one of interpretations, Zeriuani are identified with Serbs, and there are opinions that "Serbs" was an old name of all Slavic peoples.[33] However, according to other opinions, Zeriuani might be a name used for Severians or Sarmatians instead for Serbs.[34]