Republika Srpska no relation Ireland
Name
In the name Republika Srpska, Srpska is a noun derived from the ethnonym of the Serbs with a different suffix than Srbija ‘Serbia’.
In Serbian, many names of countries are formed with the -sk- suffix (e.g. Bugarska ‘Bulgaria’, Danska ‘Denmark’, Finska ‘Finland’, Hrvatska ‘Croatia’, Irska ‘Ireland’, Turska ‘Turkey’).
An analogous English formation would be Serbland (which has been used sporadically).
Since the suffix -sk- originally forms adjectives and the country names of this type are nominalisations, Republika Srpska has often been misunderstood to mean ‘Serb Republic’.
However, the noun Srpska is often used without Republika as a stand-alone noun in Serbian, e.g. in the names of the political party United Srpska (Ujedinjena Srpska), of the newspaper Glas Srpske, of the postal service Pošte Srpske or of the entity's writers’ association (Udruženje književnika Srpske).
As a proper noun, Srpska is always capitalised in Serbian, whereas postponed adjectives in names and titles are not (cf. the cultural organisation Matica srpska, with a small s in the adjective srpska ‘Serbian’).
The government uses the name “Republic of Srpska” in English.Although Republika Srpska is variously glossed in English as “Serb Republic”, “Bosnian Serb Republic”, or “Republic of Srpska”, the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and English-language news sources such as the BBC, The New York Times, and The Guardian generally refer to the entity by its transliteration.
According to Glas Srpske, a Banja Luka daily, the modern entity's name was created by its first minister of culture, Ljubomir Zuković.
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