Old Church Slavonic - Nomenclature

Nomenclature

The name of the language in Old Church Slavonic texts was simply Slavic (словѣ́ньскъ ѩзꙑ́къ, slověnĭskŭ językŭ), derived from the word for Slavs (словѣ́нє, slověne), the self-designation of the compilers of the texts. This name is preserved in the modern names of the Slovak and Slovene languages. The language is sometimes called Old Slavic, which may be confused with the distinct Proto-Slavic language. The commonly accepted terms in modern English-language Slavic studies are Old Church Slavonic and Old Church Slavic.

Historically, a few now-obsolete names have also been used:

• Old Bulgarian is the only designation used by Bulgarian-language writers. Outside of Bulgaria, Old Bulgarian (German: Altbulgarisch) was used in the 19th century by August Schleicher, Martin Hattala, Leopold Geitler and August Leskien who noted similarities between the first literary Slavic works and the modern Bulgarian language. For similar reasons, Russian linguist Aleksandr Vostokov used the term Slav-Bulgarian.
• Old Macedonian is occasionally used by Western scholars for many of the same reasons, but also in a regional context.
• Old Slovenian was used by early 19th century scholars who conjectured that the language was based on the dialect of Pannonia.