Ethnonym
The Albanians (Albanian: Shqiptarët) and their country Albania (Albanian: Shqipëria) have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is "Shqiptar", plural "Shqiptarë"; the name "Albanians" (Byzantine Greek: Albanoi/Arbanitai/Arbanites; Latin: Albanenses/Arbanenses) was used in medieval documents, that gradually entered European languages from which other similar derivative names emerged.[57]
From these ethnonyms, names for Albanians were also derived in other languages, that were or still are in use.[58][59][60] In English "Albanians"; Italian "Albanesi"; German "Albaner"; Greek "Arvanites", "Alvanitis" (Αλβανίτης) plural: "Alvanites" (Αλβανίτες), "Alvanos" (Αλβανός) plural: "Alvanoi" (Αλβανοί); Turkish "Arnaut", "Arnavut"; South Slavic languages "Arbanasi" (Арбанаси), "Albanci" (Албанци); Aromanian "Arbineş" and so on.[52][58][59][60][61][62]
The term for a people located in the area of Albania is first encountered in the works of Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates. He referred to them as "Albanoi" having taken part in a revolt against the Byzantine Empire in 1043 and to the "Arbanitai" as subjects of the Duke of Dyrrachium (modern Durrës).[63] These references have been disputed as to whether they refer to Albanians in an ethnic sense.[63][64] A later reference to Albanians from the same Attaliates regarding the participation of Albanians in a rebellion around 1078 is undisputed.[65] In later Byzantine usage, the terms "Arbanitai" and "Albanoi" with a range of variants were used interchangeably, while sometimes the same groups were also called by the classicising name Illyrians.[66][67][68] The first reference to the Albanian language dates to the latter 13th century (around 1285).[69]
The ethnonym Albanian has been hypothesized to be connected to and stem from the Albanoi,[70][71][72] an Illyrian tribe mentioned by Ptolemy with their centre at the city of Albanopolis.[58][73] Linguists believe that the alb part in the root word originates from an Indo-European term for a type of mountainous topography, from which other words such as alps are derived.[74] Through the root word alban and its rhotacized equivalents arban, albar, and arbar, the term in Albanian became rendered as Arbëneshë/Arbëreshë for the people and Arbënia/Arbëria for the country.[57][58] The Albanian language was referred to as Arbnisht and Arbërisht.[73] While the exonym Albania for the general region inhabited by the Albanians does have connotations to Classical Antiquity, the Albanian language employs a different ethnonym, with modern Albanians referring to themselves as Shqip(ë)tarë and to their country as Shqipëria.[58] Two etymologies have been proposed for this ethnonym: one, derived from the etymology from the Albanian word for eagle (shqipe, var., shqiponjë).[60] In Albanian folk etymology, this word denotes a bird totem, dating from the times of Skanderbeg as displayed on the Albanian flag.[60][75] The other is within scholarship that connects it to the verb 'to speak' (me shqiptue) from the Latin "excipere".[60] In this instance the Albanian endonym like Slav and others would originally have been a term connoting "those who speak [intelligibly, the same language]".[60] The new ethnonyms Shqip(ë)tarë and Shqipëria emerged and replaced the older ethnonyms Arbëneshë/Arbëreshë and Arbënia/Arbëria between the late 17th and early 18th centuries.[58] That era brought about religious and other sociopolitical changes.[58] As such a new and generalised response by Albanians based on ethnic and linguistic consciousness to this new and different Ottoman world emerging around them was a change in ethnonym.[58]
