144 REPORT — 1851. 



constituted the Lithuanian people. Among the Teutonic tribes there are 

 frequent compounds of B and C, but the Scandinavian tribes exhibit the 

 Low-Germans, or class B, in the purest form. It is the intention of the 

 following pages to use the distinction between the Scandinavian and pure 

 Sclavonian languages for the purpose of resolving into its separate elements 

 the Italian compound of the two which has caused so much difficulty to phi- 

 lologers. But in the first place I must consider the Asiatic contacts of the 

 Sclavonian race, and the problem, which is suggested and solved by these 

 juxtapositions. 



Schafarik has shown that the earliest names under which the Sclavonian 

 race is recognised in Europe are the appellation of Wends, Winden, O.-H.-G. 

 Winidd, A.-S. Veonodas, which was given to them by their German neigh- 

 bours, and the title of Servians, Serbs, Sorbs, which they bestowed upon 

 themselves. It is of no avail for the purposes of ethnography to examine 

 the name which this race received from their neighbours, but it is interesting 

 to inquire why they called themselves Servians. From a comparison of the 

 forms Sermende, Sirmien, with others in which the b is changed into m, 

 Grimm {Gesch. d. deutschen Sprache, p. 172) is disposed to recognise the 

 root Serb' in the name of the ancient Sartnatians. I consider this latter 

 word as a compound, and shall discuss its meaning by and by. Schafarik, who 

 does not now admit the Sclavonian affinities of the Sarmatians (Slawiscke 

 Alterthiimer, i. p. 333, seq. ed. Wuttke), connects the ethnic name Servian 

 with the Russ. jaaseri =z puer, privignus, PoL pasierb, which he identifies with 

 pastorek, pasterka=privignus, the t in the latter being an arbitrary insertion, 

 as in strjbro for srebro ^= argentum, &c., so that pa-ser-b and pa-ser-k differ 

 only in the formative affix, and the two words fall into an equality with one 

 another and with the S&nscT. paser = puer, Pers. puser, Pehlevi poser, &c. 

 The root then is that of the Sanscr. su = generare, and the meaning of the 

 ethnical name Serb is merely " natio, gens," after the analogy of the term 

 Deutsch, Thiotisk, derived from the Gothic thidda=^gens {Slatv. Alterth. i. 

 p. 178-180). This appears tome very vague etymology, and I have no he- 

 sitation in proposing another derivation, which, though it ultimately falls 

 back on the same root, presents it under a special form and not in a mono- 

 syllable, which, as Grimm says, might be the mother of every word beginning 

 with the letter s. The old gloss of the Mater Verborum, published by 

 Schafarik and Palacky, in Die dltesten Denhndler der Bohmischen Sprache, 

 contains the following definition, p. 225 [303] : " Sr'bi, Sarmate si7bi turn 

 dicti a serendo i. quasi sirbtiim." Now the earliest notice which we have 

 respecting the Sclavonians is the statement of Procopius (B. Goth. iii. c. 14. 

 p. 498) that their ancient name was STropot, which he refers to the fact that 

 they were a-Kopah^v lii.a^r]vi)ixkvoi. We cannot doubt that SttcJ/jos involves 

 a metathesis of the genuine Serb or Sorb, and it is equally obvious that this 

 metathesis was occasioned by a wish to make the word correspond in Greek 

 to the meaning which Procopius had heard attached to it. But there is no 

 reason whatever for supposing that the metaphor, involved in the Greek 

 adverb and in the name of the scattered islands of the ^gean, was also 

 common in the old Sclavonian idiom. On the contrary, the analogy of other 

 Sclavonian gentile names would show that the word would designate them 

 by their employment, or by the physical features of the locality, and that 

 they might be called "sowers," i.e. "agriculturists," as occupiers of the 

 plains, in contrast to their neighbours, just as the Chorwats got this name 

 from being mountaineers, and just as the Pomerajiians were so called from 

 living on the sea. Thus the name Serb will correspond in effect to that of 

 Pole, the latter denoting the plains in which the agriculturists were settled, 



