> Albanci.
>
> The romanians use
> > the "arnãut" which is a turkish loan (arnavud) which desemned
> the
> > mercenar Albanians soldier in the Turkish army.
>
> This is a derrogative name, which is used, I think, with reference
> to Albanians, but it is a clear late loan from Turkish.
> Eva
************
Indeed, 'Arnavud' is metathetic form of Greek's one 'Arvanit' (n - v
> v - n) and, due to vocal harmony, became instead of Arnavit >
Arnavud, because /u/ may come only after /a/ or /u/. So, it's not
derogative name in Turkish, neither Arnavut-luk 'Albania', nor
plural form arnavut-lar 'Albanians', nor Arnavut-çe 'in Albanian'.
Greek form Arvanit is normaly from Albanian Arban 'the inhabitants
of the fields' (cf. antinomic pair <mal e arber> 'field and
mountain'), besides Alban 'the inhabitants of the mountains'. In the
Middle Age Albanians was known exclusivly by this name with
derivatives (t.) Arbëri, (g.) Arbni 'land of Arbans',
Arbëresh/Arbnesh or i Arbnesh 'citizen of Arbnia'.
Furthermore, in Midlle Age we may find also Slavic forms Raban,
Rabanaki with regular metathesis of liquids a - r > r - a.
Albanian name for Romanian was Gogë 'bricklayer' and Magogë 'very
bad bricklayer'.
Konushevci