The first written use of the name "Slavs" dates to the 6th century AD.[1] [2]

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Ancient Roman writers referred to the ancestors of Slavs as "Veneti" in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, inhabiting lands east of the Vistula River and along the Venedic Bay (Gdańsk Bay). Authors such as Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, and Ptolemy described them in this period.[1] [3] Later, during the Migration Period, these early Slavs were known to Byzantine writers as Veneti, Antes, and Sclaveni.[1]

The 6th-century historian Jordanes, in his 551 AD work Getica, referred to the Slavs (Sclaveni), noting that "although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni."[1] [3] Procopius, writing in 545 AD, also stated that "the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called Sporoi in olden times."[1] [3] The oldest mention of Slavs in historical writing, Slověne, is possibly attested in Ptolemy's Geography (2nd century) as Σταυανοί (Stavanoi) and Σουοβηνοί (Souobenoi/Sovobenoi, Suobeni, Suoweni), likely referring to early Slavic tribes in alliance with nomadic Alanians.[1]

The ethnonym "Slavs" itself is reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ, plural *Slověne, and is generally considered to derive from slovo ("word"), meaning "people who speak (the same language)" or "people who understand one another."[2]