[3] Another basic source associated with the hydronym Bathinus is the Salonitan inscription of the governor of Dalmatia, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, where it is stated that the Bathinum river divides the Breuci from the Osseriates.
[5] According to philologist Anton Mayer the name Bosna could essentially be derived from Illyrian Bass-an-as(-ā) which would be a diversion of the Proto-Indo-European root *bhoĝ-, meaning "the running water".
[7] The Croatian linguist, and one of the world's foremost onomastics experts, Petar Skok expressed an opinion that the chronological transformation of this hydronym from the Roman times to its final Slavicization occurred in the following order; *Bassanus> *Bassenus> *Bassinus> *Bosina> Bosьna> Bosna.
[8][9] Theories that advocates the link of the name Bosnia, and thus of the Bosniaks with the Early Slavs of northern Europe has initially been proposed by the 19th century historians Joachim Lelewel and Johann Kaspar Zeuss, who considered the name of Bosnia to be derived from a Slavic ethnonym, Buzhans (Latin: Busani), mentioned in the Primary Chronicle and by the Geographus Bavarus in his Description of cities and lands north of the Danube.
[14] In the Slavic languages, -ak is a common suffix appended to words to create a masculine noun, for instance also found in the ethnonym of Poles (Polak) and Slovaks (Slovák).
The South Slavic endonym Bošnjani (Latin: Bosniensis, Serbo-Croatian: Bošnjani or Бошњани in Cyrillic script), referring to Bosnia inhabitants,[17] was used during the 14th and 15th century in order to denote local population of the Banate of Bosnia and later the Kingdom of Bosnia., which can be attested in various charters of the 14th and 15th centuries during the reign of ban Stjepan II Kotromanić, ban and king Tvrtko I Kotromanić, King Stjepan Ostoja, and charters of their nobility.
[21] However, the concept of nationhood was foreign to the Ottomans at that time – not to mention the idea that Muslims and Christians of some military province could foster any common supra-confessional sense of identity.
By the end of the 20th century, the demonym Bosniak(s) was chosen by the Bosnian Muslims, and in 27 and 28 September 1993 adopted as an ethnonym at the Prvi sabor Vijeća Kongresa bosansko-muslimanskih intelektualaca (transl.