The name Wends has been used variously throughout history with regard to the Slavs. It is thought to be derived from VENEDI, a term used by ancient Greeks and Romans for all peoples living to the east of the GERMANICS, centuries earlier than Slavs as a distinct ethnic group had emerged. It was later used by early medieval Carolingian Franks as a collective name for Slavic tribes near their eastern borders. The use of this name for ancestors of historically known Slavs is a device employed by modern Slavic scholars with a nationalistic agenda to claim more ancient antecedents for the Slavs than they actually had.
The Germanics, in particular the Franks who invaded the region in the eighth century C. E. and established the Sorbian (or Lusatian) Mark, referred to those Slavic tribes between the Elbe and Oder Rivers as Wends and their territory as Wendenland. Other tribes farther to the West were later grouped among them as well. One group was known as the SORBS, or Lusatian Sorbs. Some writers have used the names Wends and Sorbs interchangeably. Others apply the name Polabians to those tribes in German territory in the north, because of a shared Polabian dialect, and Sorbs to those in the south.
The Western Slavic dialect still spoken by present-day Lusatian Sorbs is referred to as Lusatian, Sorbian, or Wendish. A community of people also identified as Wends currently lives in eastern Slovenia.
World History
