Zeriuani

The Zeriuani or Zeruiani was a Slavic tribe mentioned by the 9th-century Bavarian Geographer (BG). It states that the Zeruiani "which is so great a realm that from it, as their tradition relates, all the tribes of the Slavs are sprung and trace their origin". Scholarship connect it to Procopius' Sporoi, the Serbs, and Severians.

Quote

Zeruiani tantum est reguum, ut ex eo cunctae gentes Sclavorum exortae sint, et originem, sicut affirmant, ducant[1]
Zeruiani which is so great a realm that from it, as their tradition relates, all the tribes of the Slavs are sprung and trace their origin[2]

Etymology

While earlier scholars assumed to have been connected to early Serbs (or White Serbs),[3][4][1][5][6][2] Czech anthropologist Lubor Niederle (1865–1944) considered it as a corruption of either Sarmatians, Serbs or Severians.[7] Modern Polish scholars like Henryk Łowmiański concluded it as a corrupted form of the name of the Severians. It is claimed that the Serb ethnonym was never written with the Slavic suffix -jane (-eani), while the tribal name of the Severians was written in both collective Sever and plural Severjane form, etymologically implying Severian tribes. Gerard Labuda considered those tribes arrived from the Lesser Poland and western Ukraine, while Ryszard Kiersnowski assumed the Zeriuani were a relic of a large group which lived along the river Oder, but as there was no recorded tribe with such a name in those parts it also indicates the Ruthenian and Balkan Severians.[8]

See also
  • Sporoi, mentioned by Procopius

References
  1. Šafařík 1865, p. 29.
  2. Cross 1963, p. 6.
  3. Zeuss 1837, p. 615.
  4. Lelewel 1852, p. 43.
  5. Persowski 1962, p. 73.
  6. Palacký 1876, p. 89.
  7. Lubor Niederle (1923). Manuel de l'antiquité slave ... É. Champion. p. 19.
  8. Witczak 2013, p. 34, 37–43.

Sources

Further reading
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