[Footnote 4: Schaffarik in his work on _Slavic Antiquities_ attempts to prove that the Sarmatae were no Slavi, but a Perso-Median nation; remnants of which, he thinks, he has discovered in the Alanes and Osetenzes in the Caucasus.]

[Footnote 5: The name of the _Slavi_ has generally been derived from _slava_, glory, and their national feelings have of course been gratified by this derivation. But the more immediate origin of the appellation, is to be sought in the word _slovo_ word, speech. The change of _o_ into _a_ occurs frequently in the Slavic languages, (thus _slava_ comes from _slovo_) but is in this case probably to be ascribed to foreigners, viz. Byzantines, Romans, and Germans. In the language of the latter, the _o_ in names and words of Slavic origin inmany instances becomes _a_. The radical syllable _slov_ is still to be found in the appellations which the majority of the Slavic nations apply to themselves or kindred nations, e.g. Slovenzi, Slovaci, Slovane, Sloveni, etc. The Russians and Servians did not exchange the _o_ for _a_ before the seventh century. See Schaffarik's _Geschichte_, p. 5. n. 6. The same writer observes, p. 287. n. 8, "It is remarkable that, while all the other Slavic nations relinquished their original _national_ names, and adopted _specific_ names, as Russians, Poles, Silesians, Czekhes, Moravians, Sorabians, Servians, Morlachians, Czernogortzi, Bulgarians; nay, when most of them imitating foreigners altered the general name _Slovene_ into _Slavene_, only those two Slavic branches, which touch each other on the banks of the Danube, the _Slovaks_ and the _Slovenzi_, have retained in its purity their original national name."--According to Schaffarik's later opinion, as expressed in his _Antiquities_, the appellation Slavi, Slaveni, or Slovenians, is derived from one of their seats, that is, the country on the Upper Niemen, where the _Stloveni_ or _Sueveni_ of Ptolemy lived. It is said to be called by the Finns _Sallo_ (like every woodland); by the Lithuanians, _Sallawa, Slawa_; in old Prussian, _Salava_; by the neighbouring Germans, _Schalauen_; in Latin, _Scalavia_. But it seems a more natural conclusion, that _vice versa_ the name of the district was rather derived from Slavic settlers living in the midst of a German, Russian, and Finnish population--For the derivation from _slovo_, word, speech, the circumstance seems to speak, that in most Slavic languages the appellation for a German (and formerly for all foreigners) is _Njemetz_, i.e. one dumb, an impotent, nameless, speechless person. What more natural, in a primitive stage of culture, than to consider only those as speaking, who are _understood_; and those who seem to utter unmeaning sounds, as dumb, impotent beings?]

Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic — Part 21