Osservazioni sulla denominazione delle scritture slave

The paper deals with the question of the oldest denomination of glagolitic alphabet and, in consequence, of the cyrillic too. Traditionally, scholars have related the current name «glagolitica» or «glagolica» to the verb glagolati or to the substantive “glagol”, which is also the name of the fourth letter. But this is clearly a paraetymology, whose origin goes back to later time. In fact, the oldest sources transmit ethnical names, i. e. slovenskyja gramota and its variants, but the russian Khronograf (1494) contains the enigmatic denomination “litica”. Different hypothesis arose to explain this name, but they start from a common assumption that there has been an orthographical misunderstanding of lection «glagolitica» by the scribe. A new hypothesis is presented in this article according to which the name litica is a slavic derivation of the greek denomination «grammata lita» whose use as terminus technicus to indicate a majuscule writing is well known by greek sources. Slavic scribes would add to the greek adjective «lita» the slavic suffix -ica with collective meaning to indicate the letters as a whole (similar formations as bukvica or gramotica are also known). Maybe, in the course of time, the original significance of the word got lost and it would seem to be derivated from “glagol”. In parallel with this question, other medieval denominations of both slavic alphabets are examinated.