From: george knysh
Message: 64298
Date: 2009-06-29
--- On Mon, 6/29/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
****GK: On the matter of the historical "Croats": I am leaning towards the notion that they might have been named after their initial organizer. The name does appear separately in the list of the migrant clans given by Constantine Porph. in the mid-10th c. If the Avar Khan Bayan appointed an Avar warrior called "Horvat" (or something similar) to the task of putting together Avaria's northern defenses in and along the Carpathians (against the threatening Turks of Asia who conquered Kerch in 576 and made demands on Constantinople against the Avars), this Horvat might have drafted a considerable numbern of subject Slavs (and others) into his divisions (or whatever they were called), and the various groups would become "Horvat's men" = Croats. There are many historical analogies to this onomastic procedure.****