page_title: Names of the Albanians and Albania
section_title: Arvanites
hierarchical_section_title: Names of the Albanians and Albania / Arvanites
caption_attribution_description: English: A group of upper-class Albanians
context_page_description: The Albanians and their country Albania have been identified by many ethnonyms. The native endonym is Shqiptar. The name "Albanians" was used in medieval Greek and Latin documents that gradually entered European languages from which other similar derivative names emerged. Linguists believe that the alb part in the root word originates from an Indo-European term for a type of mountainous topography, meaning "hill, mountain", also present in Alps. Through the root word alban and its rhotacized equivalents arban, albar, and arbar, the term in Albanian became rendered as Arbëreshë for the people and Arbëria for the country.
  Contemporary Albanian language employs a different ethnonym, with modern Albanians referring to themselves as Shqiptarë and to their country as Shqipëria. Two etymologies have been proposed for this ethnonym: one, derived the name from the Albanian word for eagle. The eagle was a common heraldic symbol for many Albanian dynasties in the Late Middle Ages and came to be a symbol of the Albanians in general, for example the flag of Skanderbeg, whose family symbol was the black double-headed eagle, as displayed on the Albanian flag.
context_section_description: Arvanitis (Αρβανίτης), plural: Arvanites (Αρβανίτες); is a term that was historically used amongst the wider Greek-speaking population to describe an Albanian speaker regardless of their religious affiliations until the interwar period, alongside with Alvanoi (Αλβανοί). The name  was established in Greek language from the original ethnonym Alvanitis (Άλβανίτης), which in return derived from Alvanos (Άλβάνος). The name appears as the ethnonym of Albanians in medieval Byzantine sources, originally as "Arbanitai", (in Greek language the letter 'b' is pronounced as 'v'; hence "Arvanitai") and was rendered in modern Greek as "Arvanites".
  Today, the term Arvanites is used by Greeks to refer to descendants of Albanians or Arbëreshë that migrated to southern Greece during the medieval era and who currently self identify as Greeks, as a result of assimilation. Sometimes its variant Alvanites may be used instead. In the region of Epirus within Greece today, the term Arvanitis is still used for an Albanian speaker regardless of their citizenship and religion. While the term Arvanitika (Αρβανίτικα) is used within Greece for all varieties of the Albanian language spoken there, whereas within Western academia the term is used for the Albanian language spoken in Southern Greece. Alongside these ethnonyms the term Arvanitia (Αρβανιτιά) for the country has also been used by Greek society in folklore, sayings, riddles, dances and toponyms. For example, some Greek writers used the term Arvanitia alongside the older Greek term Eprius for parts or all of contemporary Albania and modern Epirus in Greece until the 19th century.
caption: Albanians in the 19th century
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