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.
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 in many 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?
The earliest Slavic historian is the Russian monk Nestor, born in the year 1056. See below, in the History of the Old Slavic and of the Russian languages. The reader will there see, that even the authority and age of this writer has been in our days attacked by the hypercritical spirit of the modern Russian Historical school.
See Görres' Mythengeschichte der Asiatischen Welt, Heidelb. 1810. Kayssarov's Versuch einer Slavischen Mythologie, Götting. 1804. Dobrovsky's Slavia, new edit. by W. Hanka, Prague 1834, p. 263-275. Durich Bibliotheca Slavica, Buda 1795. J. Potocki's Voyages dans quelques parties de la Basse Saxe pour la recherche des antiquités Slaves, Hamb. 1795. J.J. Hanusch, Wissenschaft des Slavischen Mythus. Lemberg, 1842.