%0 Journal Article
%T The Name of Croats
%A Matasovi£¿
%A Ranko
%J -
%D 2019
%X Sa£¿etak This paper uses the oldest attestation of the name of Croats to reconstruct its Proto- Slavic form as *Xurw¨¡t- > *X§ìrvat§ì. We then explain why this name figures in the Latin and Greek documents of the 9th and 10th centuries respectively as Croatae and Khr¨­b¨¢toi. Wt then show that all of the hitherto suggested Slavic etymologies of this name are either implausible or outright impossible. Only the etymology deriving *X§ìrvat§ì 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
%U https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=332787