Kosovo “historian” said that the name of the region is not Slavic, but “Illyrian” in origin
The director of the Kosovo Ali Hadri Institute of History, Sabit Silja, said that the name “Kosovo” is of Illyrian origin and does not have a Slavic etymology.
KlanKosova reports this, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“The interpretation of the term Kosovo was given by the Croatian academician Josip Roglic, who rightly emphasized that all terminology and geographical names on the Illyrian Peninsula (Balkans - ed.) belong to the Illyrian language. So the name Kosovo is of Illyrian origin and does not have a Slavic etymology,” Silja said. “The term Kosovo can be found in other parts of it - in Bosnia, Macedonia, Dalmatia, wherever the Illyrian ethnic group developed.”
“Until 1912, these territories of ours were considered Old Serbia by Serbian historiography, from 1913 to 1915, at the end of the First World War, another name appeared - Southern Serbia, and this term will exist until the Second World War. Then, Kosovo was divided into regions, districts, and the main goal was the denationalization of the Albanians. At the end of the Second World War, the part of Kosovo that belongs to Prizren and Pec will be called “Metohija”, and this term comes from the Greek word and has the meaning of “ecclesiastical”, said the Director of the Kosovo Institute of History “Ali Hadri”.
According to Silja, linguists and etymologists should have the last word on this issue, and he, as a historian, adheres to the position of the Croatian academician Josip Roglic, who argued that all the names of the “Illyrian Peninsula” are part of the Illyrian language and have nothing to do with the Slavs.
According to the theory accepted by the Albanians, their people, who are not mentioned in ancient and early medieval sources, are descendants of the autochthonous pre-antique and ancient population of the Balkans - the Illyrians and Dardanians.
At the same time, unbiased historians consider the Albanians to be an alien ethnic group that appeared on the peninsula no earlier than the last millennium. According to one version, they are the descendants of the population of Caucasian Albania, related to the modern Lezgins, who fled from their native lands under the pressure of various invaders, primarily Arabs and Turks.
A Kosovar "historian" claimed that the region's name is not of Slavic, but of "Illyrian" origin.