Serbian surnames are the names of Slavic individuals of Serb origin in the Balkans, generally hailing from the region around modern-day Serbia, but including large communities of people in adjoining countries like Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, such has been the tangled history of the Balkans. Most Serbian surnames are historically rooted in the name of the ancient founder of a family. Additionally, Serbs are somewhat unusual in that many people have carried sobriquets after their surname in modern times.
History of Serbian surnames and naming conventions
As with so much of Central and Eastern Europe, the surname history of the Serbian people has its major roots in the movement of the Slavs into Europe from Eurasia from the sixth century onwards. They settled across much of the region from Poland south into the Balkans and would change the linguistic landscape of the entire region. Thus, as surnames began developing in the Balkans in the High Middle Ages based primarily on lineage and the supposed founder of a family line of descent, the Slavic diminutive suffix -ić was added at the end of the word as a patronymic. Thus, for instance, Petrović means ‘the son of Peter’. However, there are also matronymic Serbian surnames where the line of descent from a mother is paramount, such as Petrić which means ‘the son of Petra’, though such matronymic surnames are far less common that patronymic versions.[1]
The Slavic migrations into Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries CE
A longstanding tradition in medieval and early modern Serbia was for individuals to also have a sobriquet which acted as a descriptor of them physically or personality-wise. For instance, a person might have ‘Zmaj’ after their surname, which means ‘dragon’, or ‘Moler’ means ‘painter’ as a sobriquet. While these were more common in times gone by, there is still a strong tradition within Serb society of adopting a sobriquet of this kind.
In early modern times as the Balkans was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and it became beneficial to conform to the ruling power’s religion and culture, many Serb Slavs changed their surnames slightly. For instance, surnames which end in ‘ović’ often indicate that the family may have converted to Islam and attempted to make their surname sound more Turkish at some juncture between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Others simply adopted an entirely Islamic name.[2]
Most Popular surnames and their origins
Some of the most popular Serbian surnames tend to be:
Jovanović – The most common surname in Serbia today, with nearly 150,000 people bearing the name out of a population of just under seven million. It effectively means ‘the son of Jovan’, with Jovan being approximate to John.
Petrović – Approximately 120,000 Serbs today bear this surname, which as we saw above equates to ‘son of Peter’.
Stojanović – Another common surname with roughly 50,000 Serbs bearing it, this translates to ‘son of Stojan’.
Dimitrijević – This is an unusual Serbian surname, one which effectively means ‘son of Demeter’. Demeter was the Greek goddess of grain and the harvest, showing the residual influence of Pagan culture in medieval Serbia.
Mladenović – A relatively common surname with some 25,000 Serbs bearing it. This means ‘son of Mladen’ and may well refer to descendants of Branko Mladenović, a prominent lord of the Kingdom of Serbia in the fourteenth century.
Geographical spread of Serbian surnames
A linguistic map of the Slavic languages across Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
The spread of Serbian surnames is somewhat complex owing to the entangled history of the Balkans. Serbian surnames are found most abundantly in the modern-day nation of Serbia, however they are also very common in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country which is divided between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, while there are also significant numbers of Serbs in Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Slovenia, Romania and Hungary. However, it can be very difficult to distinguish a Serb from a Croat or many other Balkan people based on their surname alone, for the simple reason that other Slavic peoples of the Balkans also commonly have surnames which end in –ić and are barely distinguishable from Serb surnames.
The Serbian diaspora
Serbia’s diaspora is not as well-known of today as that of other countries like Italy, Ireland or Spain, but it is significant all the same. Many Serbians left the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries owing to economic and political factors at home, but the major bulk of Serbia migration occurred in the aftermath of the Second World War. Unlike the Soviet Union, Josef Tito’s Yugoslavia did not impose severe restrictions on its citizens attempting to leave the country for western-aligned nations. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Serbs left the Balkans between the 1940s and 1970s. Some headed for Western Germany or Austria, two countries which were in desperate need of male workers from abroad in the aftermath of the war.[3] Others headed for Australia where they have made up a large part of the Greek and Yugoslav community there ever since. As this has occurred, Serbian surnames have been transported around the world. For instance, the German politician and former judge of the federal court, Wolfgang Nešković, is of Serb descent, having been born in Lubeck in the late 1940s, while Serbian Australians like the former actress Holly Valance (original Serb surname being Vukadinović) or the tennis player Jelena Dokić, are products of the Serb diaspora and bear Serb surnames.[4]
Famous people with Serbian surnames
Novak Djokovic, the Serb player who has won 22 Grand Slams at the time of writingNikola Tesla – The American Serbian inventor who championed alternating current and made major contributions to the development of electricity supply systems in the late nineteenth century. His surname is rare and does not use the –ić suffix. It is a particularly old Serb surname meaning something equivalent to ‘of the axe’, perhaps indicating it was a term used for a carpenter or tree-feller originally.[5]
Novak Djoković – Arguably the greatest male tennis player of all time. His surname follows the traditional Serb naming structure.
Emir Kusturica – An acclaimed Serbian film director who was born in Sarajevo. His surname does not conform to Serb naming practices as his family converted to Islam and conformed to the Ottoman ruling class in centuries gone by, in part by changing the family surname.
Mila Jovović – A Ukrainian actress and model, though her father was Serbian and it was from him that she acquired her surname, which effectively means ‘daughter of Jovan’.
