Shqiptar

[2] The first documentation of the adverb/adjective shqip can already be found in the Meshari, the oldest Albanian language book published in 1555 by Gjon Buzuku.

[2][20] The usage of the old endonym Arbënesh/Arbëresh, however, persisted and was retained by Albanian communities which had migrated from Albania and adjacent areas centuries before the change of the self-designation, namely the Arbëreshë of Italy, the Arvanites of Greece as well as Arbanasi in Croatia.

These developments resulted in the word Šiptar in Serbian usage acquiring pejorative connotations that implied Albanian racial and cultural inferiority.

It continued to be used by some Yugoslav and Serb politicians to relegate the status of Albanians to simply one of the minority ethnic groups.

[41] During a game between Austria and North Macedonia at the UEFA Euro 2020, immediately after scoring a goal, Austrian forward Marko Arnautović—who is of paternal Serb descent—shouted to Macedonian players Ezgjan Alioski and Egzon Bejtulai—both Macedonian Albanians—"Jeb'o sam ti majku šiptarsku" (Serbian for 'I fucked your Shiptar mother').

)""Their traditional designation, based on a root *alban- and its rhotacized variants *arban-, *albar-, and *arbar-, appears from the 11th century onwards in Byzantine chronicles as Albanoi, Arbanitai, Arbanites, and from the 14th century onwards in Latin and other Western documents as Albanenses and Arbanenses.

""The name with the root arb- is mentioned in old Albanian documents, but it went out of use in the main part of Albanian-speaking area and remains in use only in diaspora dialects (It.-Alb.

In the foreign languages, the Middle Ages denominations of these names survived, but for the Albanians they were substituted by shqiptarë, Shqipëri and shqipe... Shqip spread out from the north to the south, and Shqipni/Shqipëri is probably a collective noun, following the common pattern of Arbëni, Arbëri.

In the process, however, the Serbian version of the Albanian term for ethnic Albanians—'Šiptari'—had acquired an openly pejorative flavor, implying cultural and racial inferiority.

Thus the quarrel over the terms used to identify the region and its inhabitants has acquired a powerful emotional and political significance for both communities."