The Slavs who in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries came down from
the Carpathian Mountains were known, until the ninth century, as
Slovenes (Sloventzi);[4] and if, as is natural, the Serbs and Croats
wish to preserve their time-honoured names, they will perhaps agree to
call their whole country by the still more ancient name of Slovenia,
instead of the merely geographical and not wholly popular term
Yugoslavia. Considering that this name (Slovenija) found favour in the
eyes of their great Emperor Stephen Dušan, one would imagine that
the Serbs might adopt it in preference to the cumbrous "Kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes," with its unlovely abbreviation into three
letters of the alphabet. The Croats would be glad of this solution,
and thus the Yugoslavs would, unlike their relatives the Russians, the
Poles and the Czechs, have the satisfaction of living in a country
called Slovenia, the land of the Slavs.... But, although this would be
a happy solution, it seems much more probable that eventually the name
Yugoslavia will be adopted. Everyone is agreed that one inclusive
word, answering to Britain and British, is necessary. "Evo naših!"
["Here are our men!"] were the words used by the Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes as their troops marched past them in Paris during the Allied
celebration of July 1919. The Serbian Colonel of the Heiduk Velko
regiment, which was stationed at Split in 1920, and of which the other
officers were chiefly Croats, the men Moslem and Catholic, used in his
public addresses to speak of "Our kingdom." There are various
objections to the word Yugoslavia; in the first place, it was
introduced by the Austrians, who did not wish to call their subjects
Serbs and Croats; in the second place, the term is a literal
translation from the German and is against the laws of the
Serbo-Croatian language. Another, and more important objection, is
that the Bulgars, though Yugoslavs, are not included in Yugoslavia;
and perhaps the name will be officially adopted when the Bulgars join
the other Southern Slavs.
THEIR UNFORTUNATE DEMOCRATIC WAYS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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