The byzantine empire did not over all which is considered part of the balkans . Neither did the Romans. Only a small ammout of romania was part of the byzantine empire ( about the same ammout which is geographically part of the balkans today) and only about half of the country was part of the roman empire ( i am fundementally erong with distinguishing the byzantine empire from the eastern section of the roman empire . They are one and the same )
@@sticlavoda5632 Before the Roman empire fell, Byzantine, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was part of it. And there are plenty of cities on the Balkans which started as Roman or Greek settlements.
@@speedwagon1824 in fact only north greece can consider balkan the south and the islands are definitely south europe like italy malta spain and portugal
That's funny, I have never met a person who considered Greece a part of the balkans. I think where I am from "balkan" means former yugoslavia, because Bulgaria and Romania is not considered balkan either.
Listen, Greece is an absolute Balkan nation. It is completely within the Balkans, is culturally very much Balkan, and shares a lot of history with other Balkan nations, since, you know, history goes beyond Yugoslavia. Whether they think it is degrading to be a Balkan nation or not, them being a Balkan country is still a fact.
@Devil's sock Serbia is not completely within the Balkans either, neither is Croatia. But they're still considered as Balkan nations. As for the degrading thing, I meant that Greece and many other countries in the Balkans don't like being in the Balkans, so they like to pretend they aren't, i.e Romania and Slovenia. But otherwise I think we agree on most things.
@CHRISTOS TSIKRIKAS There's no such thing as a Balkan people. If you ask a Serb if he's "Balkanian" he'll look at you like you're an idiot and tell you he's a Serb. Non-brainwashed Serbs at least. It's a long story but, in Serbia there are two gruips, those who love the term Balkan, and those who hate it.
@@palamaro1603 the groupations are highly political In serbia we learn that it's a south european country because of the stigma of being southeastern and in estonia they teach it's a northern european country because of the stigma of being eastern
I am greek and definitely disagree with what you say. One of my best friends is from Croatia, and we have very similar cultures. There is also a lot of history between Greece and Romania, Greece and Bulgaria, as well as Greece and the Serbs. Also, to my knowledge, a lot of these countries have their own names for themselves
I'm Croatian and I've literally never heard of this theory. But the theory probably says it's from a proto-Slavic word, not Russian. The most popular folk theory is that it comes from a probably fictional person from Croatian history called Hrvat.
I think Serb comes from serf, because Slavs were always growing wheet. It coms from latin language and it makes sense to me because they ruled the regionvat the time
So as a person living on the Balkans: Greece is in the Balkans geographically, Turkey on the other hand is 98-99% in Asia. *Blames Encyclopedia Britannica*
Dude 20 Million people lives in Thrace thats like 4/1 of Turkish population and there are people who immigrated from Thessalonski (selanik) personally i got a greek surname and i bet most of the people who borned in thrace has some kind of connections with balkans
“C” is pronounced like “ts” and sometimes “s” in Slavic languages, like in the word Podgorica. Montenegro is called “Crna gora” (Black mountain) in its native tongue.
@@tonit4233 Yes. It seems like it also used to refer to any elevation covered by trees. So that is probably where the meaning in Bulgarian comes from..
Pretty sure 'c' is always 'ts' in Slavic languages unless part of a diagraph and/or when it has a diacritic mark. Perhaps you're thinking of the Cyrillic 'с' that in the Latin alphabet would be 's'?
If Greece and Turkey are not considered balkan then Romania shouldn't be either , especially if you go by the mountain ranges . Romania's Dobrogea region is not part of the mountain chain and is small just like Eastern Thrace part of Turkey. Romania is a Carpathian country , being equally split into central ,eastern and southeastern Europe.
@@Cream12345Ice I figured it was spelled with an Š and not an S from Patrick's pronunciation, but when I first saw it written down, I assumed it was pronounced to rhyme with "Christina". If I'm not mistaken there is also a letter Ž which sounds like the G in "beige" or the S in "fusion"
@@aaronodonoghue1791 also lj and nj are actually counted as letters because they're pronounced as a unique sound. Nj would be like the ñ in Spanish, and lj would be like ll in Spanish. I dont really know an English comparison off the top of my head
As someone living in a less... contentious part of the world, I can only imagine what it’s like knowing mentioning your country is probably gonna start a squabble. Canada had to deal with that a bit during the last Quebec referendum (and rarely from more radical First Nations activists) but it was nothing like what the Balkans must deal with.
*Name Explain:* - you titled these lands as "The Land of Slaves" @ 4:37 - this is surely a typo, as you meant "SLAVS" not "SLAVES" - Slavic does not come from the word Slaves - it comes from the Slavic word to "Celebrate" ("Slav") which means the same thing in all Slavic languages. Please correct this.
I have some constructive criticism here, as a Serb who lives on the Balkans, please do not get offended, i mean only good here 1. Greece culturally may not be Balkanic, but it definitely is geographically, as over 90% of its land is on the peninsula, hence why I personally believe it should have been mentioned, by cultural borders perhaps even Romania shouldn't be mentioned, given they are a romance country not a Slavic/Albanian one. But, as you said, you went by Encyclopedia Britannica, not your fault 2. On 4:35 and onward, you wrote "Slavs" as "Slaves". We don't really like that 3. I don't necessarily mind you mentioned Kosovo in your educational video about etymology, but what I do personally mind is you not mentioning the Serbian name for Kosovo which is "Kosovo and Metohija" as "Metohija" also has a relatively interesting etymology 4. Oh so many pronunciation mistakes, but i won't hold that against you as an English speaker, but one thing that's easily rectified is that pretty much all Slavic languages pronounce the letter "C" as "Ts", so it would be "Podgoritsa" instead of "Podgorika" 5. Near the end there is a technical mistake as you said the same thing twice in a row, that's just editing i assume Other than that, amazing video, keep up the good work and i hope your channel blows up even more in the future
You claim about Slaves. I`m claiming about Slavs also. Slovenia is not state of Slavs but state of Slovenes. Is it Serbia state of Slavs? Or state of Serbians?
The dude is quite ignorant. I meant, he includes Slovenia and Romania but excludes Greece. Greece is FULLY Balkan in every sense. Greeks who try to escape this group are deluded :).
@@arrore i think that because for some reason a lot of greeks claim they arent part of the balkans (even though they clearly are i have no idea why they even try to claim they arent) and the fact hes already done a video on greece, so there would be no reason to cause a controversy
@@costealucia5357 no dude, we are Balkan. We take part in many Balkan organizations, events, groups. Plus there are soo many Balkan communities where Romania is considered a part of. Just look at any Reddit Balkan community for example
@@cpt.dimitra Εξαρτάται από ποια μερια της Ελλαδασ εισαι, αμα εισαι από Θρακη, Μακεδονία, Θεσσαλία, και Ηπείρο τότε εισςι στα Βαλκάνια, η υπολυπη Ελλάδα, ναι είναι μεσογειακη η κουλτουρα, αλλά σε αυτά τα μέρη που σου έγραψα ειναι Βαλκάνικα, στο λέω γιατι μένω Πήλιο και εδω έχουμε κουλτουρα που τεριαζει περισσότερο στα Βαλκάνια αποτι στην Μεσόγειο
Here is my opinion on who is Balkan: Trieste aswell as other parts of Italy that are historically and culturally Slovene Slovenia Carinthia (Southern part of Austria) Croatia Bosna Serbia Montenegro Macedonia Albania Bulgaria Romania Moldova Bugeac and northern Bukovina (Ukraine) Greece European part of Turkey (Istanbul/Constantinople etc.) The criteria I mostly use is either they are south slavs, claim to be Illyrians, were occupied by Turkey for a long time and if they are geographically within the Balkan (below Danube mostly)
I live in Belgrade, and what I have heard about my city is that it was named like so because on the Kalemegdan side which used to border Austro-Hungarian Empire, there is a hill that is prominent when looking at the city, and all the houses were painted white. That's why the city looked "white" from that side.
1. The 2 most debated are not Turkey and Greece, but Turkey and Romania. Going by pure geographical boundaries, only small portions of Turkey and Romania are on the Balkans. (Thrace and Dobruja respectively). The only part of Greece that's not the Balkans are the Aegean islands. 2. Greece and Turkey share a really long common history, in forms of the Byzantine and the Ottoman Empires respectively, and recent history include the Cyprus dispute. 3. Italy is never considered a Balkan country, only 1 single city, Trieste is located on the Balkan peninsula that is part of Italy.
The Romanians have a multimillennial history in common with other peoples in the (Balkans) area, and are also almost genetically identical to the Bulgarians, those in the former Yugoslavia but also very close to the Albanians, Greeks, Hungaryans and west Ukrainians.
All the mistakes/missing info I spotted in the video: -Greece and Turkey being kicked from the Balkans -no mention of Hrvatska/Crna Gora, jet mentioned Albania's native name?? -didnt look up how to pronounce words (Croat like croak, Podgorika) -Said Croatia comes from old Russian I would recommend asking people in r/askbalkans for help, honestly, if you wanted to know more.
If Bucharest means "city of joy" that would be really interesting because in Thailand the city of Buriram (which used to be an important city of The Khmer Empire) also means "city of joy". Then you could do a Name Explain about places with different names that have the same meaning.
Tailand language Telugu was influented by Sanskrit whichis an old Indo-European language (about 3000 years old). Also our (Slovenian) language hasabout 30% similarities of words root with Sanskrit. More old Sanskrit is, more similar is. We have word for country - dežela, which is the same in part of name Bangladesh. Desh means country. Also stan in our language means home or housing, wjich isapart of name of several states - Pakistan, Avganistan, Kazahstan etc.
@@bojanstare8667 Yes, the name Buriram is derived from Sanskrit, though the culture there is a mix of Khmer and Lao, along with a minority group called The Suay who live along the Thai-Cambodian border. There's a large Hindu temple atop an extinct volcano that was built during The Khmer Empire. While Thai is not an Indo-European language it does include a lot of loanwords from Sanskrit, particularly in official and academic, or scientific vocabulary; with religious vocabulary coming from Pali which was derived from Sanskrit. "Desh" also made its way into Thai as "Prathet" meaning "country" retaining spelling that indicates the "desh" origin, so it is wonderful to see the linguistic connection between Thailand and Slovenia. "Stan" as well is used in Thai "Sathaan" which means "place" or "sathaanakan" which means "situation".
@@WaterShowsProd Interesting. For dežela I know that only our language inEurope has that word. Other Slavs say zemlja. But stan use almost all Slavs. In Slavs group of language is our of most archaic. We have also dual form of verb. & cases, single dual and plural, 9 different conjugation etc. Nice language for learning. He, he, he
@@rickastley5321 yes i know.my question was why Albanians now call their country “shqipëria” and not “Arbëria”? I heard that Albanians in Italy and the arvanites in Greece still call themselves arberor so I think it’s strange that those diaspora communities kept their original name while Albanians in Albania now call themselves differently.
@@hanspeter-kq1vw the name Shqiperia started appearing in 17-18th century by albania pashas it means "the land of the eagles" , that according to a well known myth throughtout Albania , Albanians were born by an eagle (the same way Turks say they are born of a grey wolf)
The curious thing about Montenegro's name is that the it comes from Venetian and is used in most (if not all) western European languages, but they call themselves Crna Gora (which also literally translates to black mountain)
@@tudorpop961 Just because people can have dark skin that doesn't mean they own the rights to the Black color. There are plenty of black things aside humans.
@@003mohamud hah it isn't exactly certain + exactly nobody likes that. I don't think everyone from these lands would proudly present themselves as "slaves" for 1000 years if that was so.
@@Eulers_Identity No, what i meant is that the word Slav(which means glory?) didn't come from slave, but the other way around. The English word slave comes from the word Slav. Obviously Slav doesn't mean slave, that would be ridiculous.
The old Bulgarian name was Sredets.As it is pretty close to "middle" I assume that it has something to do with Sofia being half way between the Black Sea and the Adriatic. Serdika or Serdica is older and might come from a Thracian tribe, serdeti.The meaning could be similar but the Thracian language is still largely unknown.
4:10 for any more lore to the story I can tell you this: Bucur had a daughter that was kidnapped by some tatars or migratory ppl, so he did what a rational man whould do, he got his horse and ran up to the Dniester (Nistru in romanian, the river that is now the border between Moldavia and Ukraine) he killed them and got his daughter back, then, when he got back, in his sweet shed in the middle of the Romania plains, he founded the city from nothing, now his former shed A.K.A București has a population of over 2 million folks.
Greece was always a part of Balkan culture and History. Alexander the Great conquered the Balkan peninsula and the Byzantine Empire had the Balkans under their control for centuries. Also, you mentioned the meaning of the word Balkan, and you had the Turkish meaning. Yet you excluded Turkey. Ok most of it's part is in Asia, but the eastern part is in the Balkan peninsula, and the Ottomans controlled the Balkan peninsula for at least 400 years.
Again greece is more Mediterranean than balkan and even our culture is closer to italians and spanish than serbians and bulgarians which the only thing in common is religion
Byzantines werent all greeks. Byzantine empire was a multi ethnic empire which had greek as the official language and culture but the people were rather distinct with eachother. And there were more non greek emperors then greek ones.
@@gigasigma8373 i know this. However after the 1204 Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders, the empire controlled only parts of Greece and Asia Minor that were inhabited primarily by Greeks, so they adopted a Greek identity, though they still called themselves Romans. In During the Ottoman occupation the term Roman and Greek were used interchangeably, Rum Millet, Rumelia...
Albania's name actually comes from the ancient Illryian Tribe, the Albanoi, which means "White ones" in old western Greek. The name was latter carried on to the Roman city of Albanopolis.
Albanoi is a latin mispronounciation of Arbon, Arbon means farmer and its the name albanians called themselves up to the 18th century. Albanoi doesnt mean anything in albanian.
Belgrade was once part of Hungary, under the name 'Nándorfehérvár' or simply 'Fehérvár' which literally means white castle. But it wasn't the Hungarians who named the city, because the name Bjelgrad was first mentioned in 878, two decades before the Hungarians arrived to the Carpathian Basin.
Dardania and Dukagjini are other names to refer to Kosovo, with Dardania being named after the ancient Illryian Dardani Tribe, and Dukagjini referring to the medieval Albanian noble family, the Dukagjini
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Just a hypothesis; "Field of black birds" might be literally a field that has seen many battles. The black birds refering to crows, jackdaws and ravens pecking at the corpses of fallen soldiers.
As an albanian the capital of Romania is called Bukuresht which it means beatiful and other positive meanings since our 2 languages got some similarities with some latin words. Cheers !
Fun fact: the russian word for shed is "saraj". My whole life I thought of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina as been made of sheds where people live.
Russians have a troubled history with Turks(two big Empires, who would've thought). Perhaps "saraj" and "sarayi" are related? And "saraj" was used as a mockery of what "sarayi" actually is(a palace ; I can't think of a bigger insult than to call a "palace" a "shed"). Fancy thinking, but still...
Sarai in Russian and Turkish both come from a common root meaning a dwelling or a house in Middle Persian. This root has been borrowed and has changed over the centuries in many languages meaning anywhere from curtain, tent, pavillion, shed, tavern, house, hall, inn, mansion, palace, and courtyard.
@@hoathanatos6179 Aha, now I learned something new. Glad to hear I was onto something. And thus, wouldn't be half surprised if Rus people used this just to mock Turks and their "splendid saraylar". Thank you.
11:17 Albania doesnt mean land of hills, are you trying to be serious or just miss inform people with made up non sense. Its called 'Albania' because of the illyrian tribe Albania.
The bird on Albania's flag is the Byzantine double-headed eagle, a widely used symbol in the Balkans and a sort of 'antagonist' to the star and crescent.
the star and crescent is a Muslim symbol right? if so its curious that Albania would have the antagonist symbol to it since it's a majority muslim country.
@@crimsonflood1643 yeah but the double headed eagle was used by many albanian nobles during medieval times, so its more important to their history. Also the star and crescent wasnt a muslim symbol. It was an Ottoman symbol and it even had history way before the Ottomans. It was an ancient symbol ussually connected with the city of Byzantion (Constantinople, now istunbul.)
@@crimsonflood1643 the crescent and star were used by the pagan Illyrians before Islam. A lot of cultures around the world worshipped the sun and moon. The Illyrians were a people native to the Balkans.
the albanian flag isnt taken from byzantines but influenced. Byzantines actually took it from the others. There were illyrian sculptures found in croatia showing a illyrian warrior with a spear and a shield that had a double headed eagle on it. The hittites also used the double headed eagle. It was very wide spread on the regions of anatolia, balkan and italic peninsula.
I am Bulgarian and was a tour guide in Sofia and I have no idea where you are getting this misinformation from. The name of the Bulgars doesn’t come from the River Volga and the name of the capital most certainly ISN’T the name of someone called Sophia. It’s actually pronounced with the stress on the first syllable and comes from the name of a church that’s been there since around the 4th century AD called Hagia Sofia (meaning holy wisdom). NOT a person at all. Stop spreading misinformation please.
Re: Kosovo-- I'm wondering if the "field of black birds" was so named *after* the battle and relates to the carrion birds who would have flocked to the field because of the battle, or the dead from the battle to be grim.
For the montenegro capital, Podgorica, it could also mean "under mountain" since "gotica" is a form of the word "gora" meaning mountain. The -ica suffix means its a smaller one. So its a city under a small mountain. Thats my theory on the name doe
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@@bojanstare8667 yes I looked at the map. By what criteria is a country Balkan? Geographical position, and / or historical past, cultural, religious influence?
Why do you think Montenegro would seem “complex and hard to understand “ when it is the most obvious of any name mentioned? Who do you think your audience is ? Most people with any interest in Language and etymology would immediately know the meaning. Who writesh this idiocy ?
The Name “Tirana” quite possibly is a different wording of “Tehran”. It’s founder Suleyman Pasha Bargjini, probably named it after the Persian city after campaigning against the Safavids
I was going to put a like on the video before you screwed up mentioning "old Russian roots" for the name origin of Croatia - you either learn the history well and say that White Croats were a group of Early Slavic tribes who lived among other west and east Slavic tribes in the area of modern-day Lesser Poland, Galicia (Ukraine), and Northeastern Bohemia, or use Ruthenian/Rus meaning modern Ukrainian instead
Well... you have pretty much butchered the pronunciations... :D Edit: Kosovo -> Kos (slav name for a common blackbird). A lot of battles were fought over those fields, and crows would always feast on the corpses. Edit#2: Frankly, I find it incredibly sad how little people know about these parts. Both in terms of history, and what's going on atm. So with that in mind, any publicity is good publicity...
The connection seems to be mostly cultural, because these three countries have germanic languages and a similar mythology and history. Finland hasn't always been sovereign and also has a very different cultural background.
Finland's culture and history is different to the Scandinavian countries. Especially as the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic languages all come from the same Germanic root, and often sound very similar. Norwegian and Danish are the examples where there's not a big dift between the languages. Whilst Finnish is not Germanic.
@@calvin4864 Scandinavia is peninsula. Finnland is closr to Russia and not on peninsula. Denmark is asscandinavian, becuse has thesame culture and very similar language. If Finnland is Scandinavian than also Russia is Scandinavian. Russia has border with Norway, Finland it hasn`t.
*Hears how Podgorica is pronounced* Did you know that the letter C is pronounced as 'ts' in all Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet except when followed by an H for a part of them as some use CH and some use H (and some use both) for the 'ch' sound in the Scottish word 'loch'.
So many mistakes here... Dalmatia is actually a name of Illyrian/Albanian origin meaning Sheep, from the word dal as in outdoors. Albania actually comes from the Illyrian tribe called Albanoi, meaning white people, Kosovo’s original name is Dardania.
@@letnjiznojalbanians come from illyrians. Ofc they're not 100% illyrian, no one is 100% anything. However Albanians have the most DNA from the Illyrians compared to any other nation by far.
@@chriswicker6672 Nice that racist say to other man that is racist. It is true that your freedom ends at the limit of another's freedom. If you don`t understand that, you aren`t racist but psychopath.
More like PAWD-gaw-ree-tsah. Stress is on the first syllable. English speakers have this special talent to put stress on the wrong syllable in Serbo-Croatian words. Even when you think it's impossible, they still manage to awkwardly mispronounce it xD
balkan is a turkic word means moutains , cheek in modern turkemistan they have a province called balkan, so the name is from ottoman times, and Greece is part of the balkans, and turkey also, the western part, the connection between anatolia and balkans is the BYZANTINES, all the balkanas has today byzantine culture that unites us, not the languages but the culture and the food and the music, i am romanian and i can relate to a greek or a bulgar or a turk or a albanian or a serbs, we have many things in common more similar the the differences.
10:56 small correction. Skopje doesn't mean watchtower/guard post. It comes from Episkopi which would theoretically mean watchtower in ancient Greek, but because this is a Byzantine era town, the meaning of the name is most commonly translated as "Bishopric"
Mainstream history says that the name comes from the Scupi ancient tribe. However , it is posibile that the site of Justinian Prima, the bishopric of emperor Justinian was here. Justinian was born in the nearby.
Sofia I first heard when a Pastor yelled out at me, pointing saying She has Sofia! I had no idea what they were speaking about. He then tried to deliver me from Sofia. 😳😔 He said, I am not Black. There is no way, Sofia will be with me. What a life to live.
Herzog comes from German indeed no Slavic roots in the name, it is German in roots because the name stuck after the Bosnian ruler of the land Stjepan Vukcic called himself in translation to German a Herzog or translated a Duke, when he sent a letter to a German king. Also why would the word be Serb wouldnt the first thing that comes to mind it being Bosnian language?
@@letnjiznoj On 3rd of july 1436 it was noted by the city of Kotor that a heretic girl named "Djevena" who spoke Bosnian was bought by a Venetian duke.
@@tarci2994 I didn't find anything about that and also, how accurate is one source? It could've been a mistake where they thought that people in bosnia spoke bosnian Heck, maybe people in bosnia called it bosnian kinda like all the different german states all swore how they didn't speak german when they spoke german
Lol, Slovenia means state of Slovene people. We are Slovene and not Slaven. Slavs is word for group of Slavic nations. Sloveni in Serbo-Croatian language is just fake to hide truth that Serbs and Croates are of Caucasian origin, were speaking Turcish language. Other Slavs nations haveother names for Slavs - Slavljani, Slovani etc. Just Serbs and Croates have stolen nameof our nation -Sloveni or Slovenci.
Slovene not Slavs or Slaves. Slovene means that there live Slovene people. Slovene and Slavs are not the same. It is the same, when you name English people Germanic. They are Germanic nation, but not one and only. There are some other Germanic nations too. Understand what I mean?
