Serbs
Serbs are the most numerous South Slavic ethnic group[28][29][30][31] native to the Balkans in Southeastern Europe, who share a common Serbian ancestry, culture, history and language.
Variants
- Serbian Cyrillic: Срби
- romanized: Srbi
- pronounced [sr̩̂bi]
Ethnology
The identity of Serbs is rooted in Eastern Orthodoxy and traditions. In the 19th century, the Serbian national identity was manifested,[1]with awareness of history and tradition, medieval heritage, cultural unity, despite living under different empires. Three elements, together with the legacy of the Nemanjić dynasty, were crucial in forging identity and preservation during foreign domination: the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian language, and the Kosovo Myth.[2] When the Principality of Serbia gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, Orthodoxy became crucial in defining the national identity, instead of language which was shared by other South Slavs (Croats and Bosniaks).[3] The tradition of slava, the family saint feast day, is an important ethnic marker of Serb identity,[4] and is usually regarded their most significant and most solemn feast day.[5]
The origin of the ethnonym is unclear. The most prominent theory considers it of Proto-Slavic origin. Hanna Popowska-Taborska [bg; pl] argued native Slavic provenance of the ethnonym,[6] claiming that the theory advances a conclusion that the ethnonym has a meaning of a family kinship or alliance, which was also argued by a number of other scholars.[7]
Distribution
The majority of Serbs live in their nation state of Serbia, as well as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo. They also form significant minorities in Slovenia. There is a large Serb diaspora in Western Europe, and outside Europe and there are significant communities in North America and Australia.
The Serbs share many cultural traits with the rest of the peoples of Southeast Europe. They are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians by religion. The Serbian language (a standardized version of Serbo-Croatian) is official in Serbia, co-official in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is spoken by the plurality in Montenegro.
Serbian naming customs
There are several different layers of Serbian names. Serbian given names largely originate from Slavic roots: e.g., Vuk, Bojan, Goran, Zoran, Dragan, Milan, Miroslav, Vladimir, Slobodan, Dušan, Milica, Nevena, Vesna, Radmila.
Other names are of Christian origin, originating from the bible (Hebrew, through Greek), such as Lazar, Mihailo, Ivan, Jovan, Ilija, Marija, Ana, Ivana. Along similar lines of non-Slavic Christian names are Greek ones such as: Stefan, Nikola, Aleksandar, Filip, Đorđe, Andrej, Jelena, Katarina, Vasilije, Todor, while those of Latin origin include: Marko, Antonije, Srđan, Marina, Petar, Pavle, Natalija, Igor (through Russian).
Most Serbian surnames are paternal, maternal, occupational or derived from personal traits. It is estimated that over two thirds of all Serbian surnames have the suffix -ić (-ић) ([itɕ]), a Slavic diminutive, originally functioning to create patronymics. Thus the surname Petrović means the "son of Petar" (from a male progenitor, the root is extended with possessive -ov or -ev). Due to limited use of international typewriters and unicode computer encoding, the suffix may be simplified to -ic, historically transcribed with a phonetic ending, -ich or -itch in foreign languages. Other common surname suffixes found among Serbian surnames are -ov, -ev, -in and -ski (without -ić) which is the Slavic possessive case suffix, thus Nikola's son becomes Nikolin, Petar's son Petrov, and Jovan's son Jovanov. Other, less common suffices are -alj/olj/elj, -ija, -ica, -ar/ac/an. The ten most common surnames in Serbia, in order, are Jovanović, Petrović, Nikolić, Marković, Đorđević, Stojanović, Ilić, Stanković, Pavlović and Milošević.[8]
Genetic origins
According to a triple analysis – autosomal, mitochondrial and paternal — of available data from large-scale studies on Balto-Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data situates Serbs with Montenegrins in between two Balkan clusters.[9] Y-DNA results show that haplogroups I2a and R1a together stand for the majority of the makeup, with more than 53 percent.[10][11] The aforementioned Serbian Y-chromosomes belong to lineages believed to be pre-Neolithic. Such significant levels are possibly the result of Neolithic migrations encroaching on Paleolithic populations against the Adriatic Sea.[12]
According to several recent studies Serbia's people are among the tallest in the world,[13] with an average male height of 1.82 metres (6 ft 0 in).[14][15]
History
Early Slavs, especially Sclaveni and Antae, including the White Serbs, invaded and settled Southeastern Europe in the 6th and 7th century.[16] Up until the late 560s their activity was raiding, crossing from the Danube, though with limited Slavic settlement mainly through Byzantine foederati colonies.[17] The Danube and Sava frontier was overwhelmed by large-scale Slavic settlement in the late 6th and early 7th century.[18]What is today central Serbia was an important geo-strategical province, through which the Via Militaris crossed.[19] This area was frequently intruded by barbarians in the 5th and 6th centuries.[20] The numerous Slavs mixed with and assimilated the descendants of the indigenous population (Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, Romans, Celts).[21] White Serbs from White Serbia came to an area near Thessaloniki and then they settled area between Dinaric Alps and Adriatic coast.[22] The region of "Rascia" (Raška) was the center of Serb settlement and Serb tribes also occupied parts of modern-day Herzegovina and Montenegro.[23] Prior to their arrival to the Balkans, Serbs were predominantly involved in agriculture, which is why they settled in areas which were cultivated even during Roman times. [24]
References
- ↑ Буквић, Димитрије. "Од златне виљушке до долине јоргована". Politika Online.
- ↑ Ana S. Trbovich (2008). A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 69–. ISBN 978-0-19-533343-5.
- ↑ Christopher Catherwood (1 January 2002). Why the Nations Rage: Killing in the Name of God. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 135–. ISBN 978-0-7425-0090-7.
- ↑ Ethnologia Balkanica. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 70–. GGKEY:ES2RY3RRUDS.
- ↑ Celia Jaes Falicov (1991). Family Transitions: Continuity and Change Over the Life Cycle. New York City: Guilford Press. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-89862-484-7.
- ↑ Popowska-Taborska, Hanna (1993). "Ślady etnonimów słowiańskich z elementem obcym w nazewnictwie polskim". Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Linguistica (in Polish). 27: 225–230.
- ↑ Popowska-Taborska, Hanna (1999). "Językowe wykładniki opozycji swoi – obcy w procesie tworzenia etnicznej tożsamości". In Jerzy Bartmiński (ed.). Językowy obraz świata (in Polish). Lublin: Wydaw. Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. pp. 57–63.
- ↑ Tanjug. "Srbija, zemlja Milice i Dragana : Društvo : POLITIKA". Politika. Archived from the original on 16 June 2014.
- ↑ Kushniarevich, Alena; et al. (2015). "Genetic Heritage of the Balto-Slavic Speaking Populations: A Synthesis of Autosomal, Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal Data". PLOS ONE. 10 (9): e0135820. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1035820K. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135820. PMC 4558026. PMID 26332464.
- ↑ Todorović, I.; Vučetić-Dragović, A.; Marić, A. (2014). "Компаративни аналитички осврт на најновија генетска истраживања порекла Срба и становништва Србије – етнолошка перспектива" (PDF). Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU. 62 (2). doi:10.2298/GEI1402099T
- ↑ Y-DNA haplogroups of ethnic Serbs". Порекло (in Serbian).
- ↑ Regueiro, Mario; Rivera, Luis; Damnjanovic, Tatjana; Lukovic, Ljiljana; Milasin, Jelena; Herrera, Rene (2012). "High levels of Paleolithic Y-chromosome lineages characterize Serbia". Gene. 498 (1): 59–67. doi:10.1016/j.gene.2012.01.030. PMID 22310393.
- ↑ "Average Height by Country 2022".
- ↑ "Body Height and Its Estimation Utilizing Arm Span Measurements in Serbian Adults" (PDF).
- ↑ Grasgruber, Pavel; Popović, Stevo; Bokuvka, Dominik; Davidović, Ivan; Hřebíčková, Sylva; Ingrová, Pavlína; Potpara, Predrag; Prce, Stipan; Stračárová, Nikola (2017). "The mountains of giants: An anthropometric survey of male youths in Bosnia and Herzegovina". Royal Society Open Science. 4 (4): 161054. Bibcode:2017RSOS....461054G. doi:10.1098/rsos.161054. PMC 5414258. PMID 28484621.
- ↑ Fine, John Van Antwerp Jr. (1991) [1983]. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472081497. pp. 26–41.
- ↑ Fine 1991, p. 29.
- ↑ Fine 1991, p. 33.
- ↑ Živković 2002, p. 187.
- ↑ Živković 2002, p. 187.
- ↑ Fine 1991, pp. 38, 41; Ćorović 2001, "Балканска култура у доба сеобе Словена"
- ↑ Ćirković, Sima M. (2008). "Srbi među europskim narodima (excerpt)" (PDF). www.mo-vrebac-pavlovac.hr. Golden Marketing-Tehnička Knjiga. pp. 26–27.
- ↑ Kardaras, Georgios (2018). Byzantium and the Avars, 6th–9th Century AD: Political, Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. BRILL. p. 96. ISBN 978-9-00438-226-8.
- ↑ Blagojević, Miloš (1989). Srbija U Doba Nemanjica: Od Knezevine Do Carstva: 1168-1371: Ilustrovana Hronika. TRZ "Vajat," IRO "Beograd," 1989. p. 19.