Etimologia del nome Serbia e dell'aggettivo "serbo", riferito ai cittadini della Serbia.

Ci sono numerose teorie riguardo all'origine etimologica del termine "serbo".
Va escluso qualsiasi legame con il termine "servo", di origine latina. L'unico legame tra i popoli slavi e la servitù sta nell'orine della parola schiavo dagli slavi che venivano catturati in guerra ai tempi del Medioevo. Non esiste invece nessun legame etimologico tra serbo e serbo.
Tra le varie teorie riguardanti l'origine della parola serbo, le mie ricerche hanno portato a questo unico risultato:

Etymological origin

• Polish linguist Stanisław Rospond (1906–1982) derived the denomination of Srb from srbati (cf. sorbo, absorbo).^[6]
• Sorbian scholar H. Schuster-Šewc suggested a connection with Proto-Slavic verb for "to slurp" *sьrb-, with cognates such as сербать (Russian, Ukrainian), сербаць (Belarusian), srbati (Slovak), сърбам(Bulgarian) andсеребати (Old Russian).^[7]

Antique origin

Some scholars argue that the Serb ethnonym is antique.^[8] According to this theory, Serbs are thought to have been first mentioned by Tacitus in 50 AD, Pliny the Elder in 77 AD (Naturalis Historia) and Ptolemy in his Geography2nd century AD, associated with the Sarmatian tribe of Serboi of the North Caucasus and Lower Volga.^[8] One theory is that it is of ultimately Iranian origin.^[9][10]

• Đorđe Branković (1645–1711), in his Chronicles, wrote: "The Serbian name comes from the Savromat name, as Philipp Melanchthon testifies... According to a second version the Serbian name comes from the Sires peoplewho used to live in the Asian part of Scythia. Among the Sires, wool grew in the same way as silk".^[11]

Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (325-391) referred to the Carpathians as "Montes Serrorum" in his works, according to some, connected to the Serbs.^{[citation needed]} In 1878, Henry Hoyle Howorth connected Ptolemy's mention of the town of Serbinum (Σέρβινον), modern Gradiška, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the Serbs, and also found the Serb ethnonym in the works of Vibius Sequester.^[12]

Sporoi

• In De Bello Gothico Procopius (500-565) uses the name Sporoi as an umbrella term for the Slavic tribes of Antes and Sclaveni, it is however not known whether the Slavs used this designation for themselves or he himself coined the term, it has been theorized however that the name is corruption of the ethnonym Serbs. A large number of linguists agree that 'Sporoi' (Spores) is another name for the Serbs.^[13] Sporoi may be identical with 'Sorpi=Serpi=Serbi' and 'Sclavini'.^[6]