The meaning of word SLAV

SLOVO ____
It is time to clarify an issue on the meaning of a word Slav, which is wrongly or sarcastically interpreted  by the English speaking population as slave.
First of all one should have some knowledge of  the Slavic language before jumping to conclusions.
Slav comes from the word “slovo”, which means “word” in slavic languages.
It might also come from “slava”, which means “fame”.
Slava means glory in Russian.
Most of ancient princes of Russia had names ending on “slav”
Sviatoslav = saint glory
Miroslav = glory of word
The Slavs’ own name, based on slovo, “word” originally identified a person “capable of (intelligible) words,” i.e., someone they understood, a person who spoke the same language.
The Romans called their slaves servus, which gave the modern English servant. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
The word slavus or sclavus did not exist in Latin in Roman times.
Slavic names ending in -slav incorporate the same word, such as in Czech Bohu-slav, “God’s fame, in” Russian Msti-slav, “vengeful fame,” and Polish Stani-slaw, “famous for withstanding (enemies).”
http://www.pitt.edu/~votruba/qsonhist/slavicslovak.html

Other meanings;
word
speech
promise
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slovo
The Byzantines, historically, were the first to come in contact with the migrating Slavs, recording their existence and their name.
So here we must firmly understand that the all-European word for the slaves came from the Byzantine.
Byzantine word for slave was literally from the “captured in the battle,” and nothing to do with the word “Slav”.
The name was not given to them by the Greeks.
The Byzantine historians customarily recorded the foreign name of a population group as the one used by the group itself, or as it was passed on by an intermediary.
One must remember that certain Slavic groups retained the designation “Slav” as their proper name.
These are the West Slavic populations of the Slovaks and Slovenes, and the Eastern Slovieni of Novgorod.
Therefore, one may consider this sufficient proof that the name was not borrowed by the Slavs from Latin through Byzantine Greeks, but must have been their own.
Moreover, that the Slavs in the period of formation of this word has been one of the most numerous peoples of Europe.
The proper name of the Slavs have been derived from a genuine Slavic word, designating their most important characteristic and distinguishing them from any other population group.
The name of the Slavs might have been taken from the name of a clan or a tribe.
In any case their name must have had some specific meaning before it became that of a family, clan or tribe.
One should look, then, for the meaning of the name “Slav” in their language.
Slav – Slovenin” – is certainly a Slavic name and it came to other languages from Slavic.
The name of the Slavs first emerged during the second part of the first millennium A.D and may have had religious connotations, meaning, or value.
The tradition of a religious designation of people has survived among the Slavs until the present.
The term prawoslawny, pravoslavny, seems to offer a key to the name “Slav.”
It is composed of two words: prawo, meaning “law,” “right,” and “right side,” and ‘slawny’ from the root slav-, “glorify” or ( famous) in the sense of “worshiping.
So, the name Slav could have also been derived from the early self-designation of the Slavs as “worshipers.”
The term pravo-slavny is a compound, and as all compounds in Slavic a direct translation from a foreign language, in this case from Greek.
In Greek orthodoxos the doxa retained the connotations of “worship,” or “belief,” “faith,” especially in Medieval Greek.
Thus the meaning of the Slavic component at the time of the translation must have been similarly “worship,” “worshiping.”

 Slav’n” is “pertaining to worship” with an adjective-forming suffix; it has both a passive and an active meaning, although at present only the former is used.
The translation of the name “Slav” as “worshiper” would clarify the proper names of the Slavs containing this element.
The religious origin of the group name was of primary importance for the Slavic society, as is evidenced by another term designating a social group of the Slavs.
The Russian word for peasant is krestianin, formed in the same way as Russian Slavianin, Polish Slowianin, and in simple translation meaning Christian.
The meaning of “Slav” may as well then indicate a “worshiper,” “one who glorifies God and His word.