Tolkien about the ethnonym Slav

"the word slave itself shows that a national name can become generalized" (Tolkien)

Earlier this day, I wrote a few words that now, after correspondence with Jason Fisher, I need to change. I wrote: "Professor Tolkien in his text English and Welsh (in The Monsters and the Critics collection) suggested in a veiled manner that the ethnonym Slav, Latin Sclavus, came from the Latin form sclavus, "slave". Tolkien was as wrong as many of the linguists of his days. The present state of our knowledge, even the popular one from Wikipedia, shows that it was quite the opposite, although in the early Middle Ages the Slavs were indeed the subject of the slave trade."

My friend, Jason Fisher wrote to me: "I don't think that's what Tolkien is saying at all. What Tolkien actually says (the sentence you underlined) is that a national name [i.e., Slav] can become generalized [i.e., to refer to enslaved people]. In other words, he says the general sense came from the national name, i.e., the ethnonym, and not the other way around. You write later in your piece, "The English term slave derives from the ethnonym Slav." That is exactly what I think Tolkien is saying as well." I agree with Jason and I have to change the title of my post.

 

Let us see the orignal fragment from Tolkien's lecture:

A fragment of "The Monsters and the Critics"

In Wikipedia and many more professional sources we can read that the Slavic autonym *Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo "word", originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)", i. e. people who understand each other, in contrast to the Slavic word denoting "foreign people", namely němci, meaning "mumbling, murmuring people" (from Slavic *němъ "mumbling, mute"). The latter word may be the derivation of words to denote "Germans" or "Germanic peoples" in many later Slavic languages, e. g., Czech Němec, Slovak Nemec, Slovene Nemec, Belarusian, Russian and Bulgarian Немец, Serbian Немац, Croatian Nijemac, Polish Niemiec, Ukrainian Німець, etc.

The word slovo ("word") and the related slava ("glory, fame, praise") and slukh ("hearing") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew- ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek κλέος (kléos "fame"), whence comes the name Pericles, Latin clueo ("be called"), and English loud. There are of course other, less popular theories. You can find them in the specialist articles and books (see Wikipedia).

The English term slave derives from the ethnonym Slav. In medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved, which led to the word slav becoming synonym to "enslaved person". In addition, the English word Slav derives from the Middle English word sclave, which was borrowed from Medieval Latin sclavus or slavus, itself a borrowing and Byzantine Greek σκλάβος sklábos "slave," which was in turn apparently derived from a misunderstanding of the Slavic autonym (denoting a speaker of their own languages). The Byzantine term Sklavinoi was loaned into Arabic as Saqaliba (صقالبة; sing. Saqlabi, صقلبي) by medieval Arab historiographers.

The popular Italian-language (and international) salutation Ciao! is derived from the word (in the same way as Servus! in German).

Think about this irony of fate: a certain people bear a noble name that speaks of eternal glory, and over time in the tongues of their persecutors that name becomes synonymous with slavery.