Albanoi
Stephanus of Byzantium who reproduced Hecataeus added an entry for another settlement named Arbon in Illyria whose inhabitants were called Arbonioi or Arbonites.
John of Nikiû wrote in the 7th century CE about a people known as Arbanitai in the Greek translation of the manuscript.
The Albanoi were possibly first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus (550-476 BCE) under the name Abroi, who lived around the same area.
[2] The process was similar to the spread of the name Illyrians from a small group of people on the Adriatic coast, the Illyrioi.
The place has not been identified, and it is unlikely that it refers to the northern Adriatic island of Rab (attested for the first time as Arba by Pliny).
[7] An interdisciplinary reading of the passage indicates that "Arbon" might actually have been in central Albania, roughly in the same location as the later Albanopolis (Ptolemy) and Arbanon (Anna Komnene).
[10] John of Nikiû (7th century), a Coptic bishop mentions in the French translation of a manuscript titled Chronicle that barbarians, foreign peoples and Illyrians, ravaged the cities of the Christians and took the inhabitants alive in the Byzantine Empire.
Constantine Sathas (1842-1912) who first recorded the discrepancy between different translations considered the mention of Alwerikon an attestation of the same population as the Illyrian Albanoi.
The second use of the term Albanoi is related to groups which supported the revolt of George Maniakes in 1042 and marched with him throughout the Balkans against the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.
[14] From thereon, in the next centuries, the term Albanoi is used extensively as the ethnonym for medieval Albanians in Byzantine literature.
The toponym Albanopolis has been found on a funeral inscription in Gorno Sonje, near the city of Skopje (ancient Scupi), present-day North Macedonia.
[18] The name of the mentioned peoples' progenitor – Mucatus – bears the Palaeo-Balkan root Muk-, Μουκ-, which is spread throughout the central Balkans featuring different suffixes depending on the language that used it.
Excavations show that the site was abandoned shortly after the Roman conquest of southern Illyria (Third Illyrian War).
[22] The ethnonym Albanos was found on a funeral inscription of the 2nd/3rd century CE from ancient Stobi, near Gradsko about 90 km to the southeast of Gorno Sonje.
In memory of Flavios Albanos, his son Aemilianos Albanos An inscription in ancient Greek in Phoenice, southern Albania related to the liberation act of the slave Nikarchos Nikomachou Arbaios is linked to the Albanoi as Arbaios is an ethnonym which has the same root as that of the Albanoi and hasn't been attested anywhere else.
