Quote Originally Posted by chinitial
The word "slavic" are related to the word "slave" in Roman and Bizantine epoch, great porcentage of the slaves came from the South of Russia, or Scythia, as was known in those times. Yet, the history is ......far away from these times....as I said.
Dictionary.com, as usual, says it better than I can:

[quote]Word History: The derivation of the word slave encapsulates a bit of European history and explains why the two words slaves and Slavs are so similar; they are, in fact, historically identical. The word slave first appears in English around 1290, spelled sclave. The spelling is based on Old French esclave from Medieval Latin sclavus, “Slav, slave,” first recorded around 800. Sclavus comes from Byzantine Greek sklabos (pronounced skl