"Kosovo is of Slavic origin. Scientifically proven"

"Kosovo is of Slavic origin. Scientifically proven"

"There is nothing in the very scarce remnants of the Illyrian language from which the name Kosovo would be derived, and on the other hand, it has a completely transparent Slavic origin", Serbian academic and linguist Aleksandar Loma says.

Loma told Kosovo online that challenging such an interpretation is completely unscientific and motivated by non-scientific arguments.

According to him, Kosovo is originally an adjective next to a field and means "a field where there are (a lot of) blackbirds (kosova in Serbian)", so that the name has always been understood, and that name for a bird is a common Slavic and Proto-Slavic language.

"The village of Kosovo exists in Bosnia near Sarajevo, there is also a Dalmatian Kosovo, Mirko's Kosovo near Jagodina has been registered", Loma said.

Regarding the statement of the director of the Institute for History "Ali Hadri" Sabit Syla that the name of Kosovo is of Illyrian origin, referring to the Croatian academician Josip Roglic, Loma says that it would be better to state where Roglic wrote what is being quoted.

"If he did write it, he was a geographer, not a linguist, I don't believe that even a Slavic linguist today, even among Croats, would stand behind such nonsense. There is nothing in the very scarce remnants of the Illyrian language from which the name Kosovo would be derived, and on the other hand, it has a completely transparent Slavic origin", states Loma, a full professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.

Loma says that on the territory of Albania itself, there is a form of the female gender of Kosovo, which, as he added, a serious Albanian linguist Xhelal Ylli correctly derives from the name for the blackbird, counting it among the toponyms of Slavic origin.

"Challenging such an interpretation is completely unscientific and motivated by non-scientific arguments," Loma believes.