ZfSHG — Zeitschrift für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte.
ZfSPh — Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie. Heidelberg.
ZHZJ — Zbomik Historijskog zavoda Jugoslovenskei Akademii znanosti і umjetnosti. Zagreb.
ZNŻOJS — Zbomik za narodni źivot i obićaje Jużnih Slavena. Zagreb.
The permanent contacts with the Iranian-speaking peoples, mostly Sarmathians, were the important feature of the ethnogenesis and the early history of the Slavs in the region near the East Carpathians during the period of their coexistence for several centuries.
The appearance of the ancient tribal union of the Croats with the name of probably Iranian origin had become one of the results of ethnical and cultural synthesis of the Slavs and the Iranians. The Slavs of the Upper Dniester having become the part of the Croatian tribal group inhabited the new territories in Central Europe and the Balkans during the process of the Great Slavonic settlement.
De administrando imperio by Constantine the Porphyrogenitus is the first written test containing the information on the origin and the history of Croats' settling, Great and White Croatias. Both the names, "Great" and "White Croatia", correspond to the traditional geographical nomination known to the contemporary science. Decoding of the symbols of the colour in the names of the peoples and the lands is based mostly on the analogies in the Sino-Tibetan, Iranian, Turkic and Mongolian languages, while the closest parallels for the names with the adjective great are found in the European toponymy.
And still, the simultaneous use of several symbolical names to produce the ethnical and geographical names must be accepted as artificial one. The case of Constantine the Porphyrogenitus' Great and White Croatia ("Great Croatia, called White…") is explained by the intention to agree the contradiction between different, sometimes competitive, versions of the history of the Croats.
The name "Great Croatia" origins in the common Slavonic and European tradition connecting the meanings great and old to indicate the territory the people had lived before at, pre-motherland, sometimes having been already abandoned and kept only in memory.
Byzantine emperor's information on the early Croatian histoiy corresponds to and concerns the meaning of "Great Croatia" as the territory of pre-motherland of the Croatian people the following migrating resulted in new names, that of the land — "White Croatia", and that of the people "White Croats", took place from.
