Ime Hrvata
The Name of Croats

Summary/Abstract: This paper uses the oldest attestation of the name of Croats to reconstruct its Proto-Slavic form as *Xurwāt- > *Xъrvatъ. We then explain why this name figures in the Latin and Greek documents of the 9th and 10th centuries respectively as Croatae and Khrōbátoi. Wt then show that all of the hitherto suggested Slavic etymologies of this name are either implausible or outright impossible. Only the etymology deriving *Xъrvatъ from Iranian *harw-at- „guardian, protector“ fulfills the criteria of formal derivability, historical plausibility and semantic probability. However, one needs to assume that this name was borrowed into Proto-Slavic from Proto-Ossetic or Alanian, because only in that Iranian language there is a change of *a to *u before a syllable containing *w.

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