/pol/ - Politically Correct

As far as textbooks go, Serbs are part of South Slavic tribes that arrived on Balkan peninsula in 6th and 7th century AD from various directions, but from the same homeland of all Slavic tribes which was somewhere between the modern Belarus, Poland and Ukraine.

However, he first notion of Serbs as a Slavic tribe is older and dates far back to Ptolemy`s “Geography”, where he describes Sarmatia. There, Ptolemy mentions 13 tribes, among them Serbs, which live between northeastern Caucasus and the Volga river.

Moshinsky considers the name Serbs originated from the indoeuropean root -ser -serv, which means protector, guardian, deriving it from latin servus. The explanaition goes to say that in speech v sounded more like b, so servus turned into serbus. Moshinsky also thinks the term Serbs meant shepherds, animal guards.

Maria Gimbutas notes one interesting thing though in her book Slavs, Sons of Perun. She explains how the Sarmats, being in constant contact with Slavic tribes, used a similar word while addressing these tribes. However, in Iranic linguistic environment, the Slavic word “serv” could have transitioned into “ksarv”. Add the suffix -at and you get a word that sounds a lot like “hrvat” which is a name for another Slavic nation in the Balkans (Croats).

Thinking about it, its funny how small a difference between the words “Srbata” and “Hrvina” is.