Ferizaj – a product of Serbian state policy

The fact that even a Serbian author, a decade before the occupation of Kosovo, does not use the name Uroševac, but Ferizović, proves that the name Uroševac had no historical existence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but was a product of later Serbian state policy. Another piece of evidence that reinforces the historical continuity of the name Ferizaj is found in Shaban Hashani's study of the history of the city. Relying on Ottoman records and various historical sources, he notes that before the construction of the Skopje–Mitrovica railway, the settlement was known as Feriz-bey. Even the change of the name of Skopje is an act of the occupying authority.

Verisović in Austro-Hungarian diplomacy

The use of the Slavic form Verisović (Ferizović) in Austro-Hungarian diplomatic documentation is also confirmed by reports related to the Ferizaj Assembly of July 1908. A telegram from the Austro-Hungarian consul in Mitrovica, Heinrich von Zambaur, dated July 5, 1908, identifies the settlement near the railway station with the name Verisović, proving that this form was also used in official Austro-Hungarian diplomatic correspondence several years before the Serbian administration imposed the name Uroševac. This confirms that the Verisović/Ferizović variants were part of the multilingual nomenclature of the Ottoman period and should not be confused with the later Serbian toponymy. Another consular document from the same period, sent by the Austro-Hungarian consul in Mitrovica to Foreign Minister Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, summarizes the decisions of the Ferizaj Assembly and refers to the requests addressed to the Sublime Porte, and the place of the assembly is noted as Verisović. The document contains the text of the Ittifaknamé (Regulation of the Covenant) with eight articles, through which the Albanian representatives of the Vilayet of Kosovo expressed their loyalty to the Sultan, demanded the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution of 1876, and committed themselves to the protection of the constitutional order. Particularly significant is Article 7, according to which the Covenant declared that its sole purpose was the restoration and implementation of the Constitution, without any other overt or covert intention. The fact that Austro-Hungarian diplomacy used the name Verisović for the 1908 Assembly proves that this form was part of the multilingual administrative practice of the time and had no connection with the name Uroševac, which would be institutionalized only after the Serbian occupation of Kosovo. In the concordance of toponyms of Austro-Hungarian consular reports, the form Uroševac is associated only with the period of Serbian administration and does not appear as a historical Ottoman or local name. Even the map of the Vilayet of Kosovo reproduced by Eva Anne Frantz marks the city as Ferizaj, testifying to the official nomenclature used before the Serbian occupation.

The testimony of the Serbian writer and Feriz-bey

Also significant is the testimony of the Serbian writer and diplomat Branislav Nušić, who served as consul of the Kingdom of Serbia in Pristina and is known for his activity in the function of Serbian state policy towards Kosovo. In his work “Kosovo: opis zemlje i naroda”, published in 1902, he treats the city in a special chapter entitled “Феризовић“ (Ferizović) and claims that the official name was Feriz-bey, while the population called the settlement Ferizović, after the railway station built there. The fact that even a Serbian author, a decade before the occupation of Kosovo, does not use the name Uroševac, but Ferizović, proves that the name Uroševac had no historical existence at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, but was a product of later Serbian state policy. Another piece of evidence that reinforces the historical continuity of the name Ferizaj is found in Shaban Hashani’s study on the history of the city. Based on Ottoman records and various historical sources, he notes that before the construction of the Skopje–Mitrovica railway, the settlement was known as Feriz-bey, after the manor owner Feriz-bey Shasivari, while after the construction of the railway station, the name Ferizaj spread as the name of the settlement that developed around the inn and the station. According to Hashani, the popular form Tasjon, used for a time by the inhabitants, also derived from the Turkish word stasyon (station), but it never replaced the name Ferizaj, which remained the identifying name of the new urban center. These data prove that the name Ferizaj was consolidated in local usage and in historical sources long before the Serbian administration replaced it with the name Uroševac. It should be added that the variants Ferizović, Verisović, Ferisovitsch and Ferisović are not different toponyms, but transcriptions and orthographic variants of the same name, used in Serbian, German and Austro-Hungarian sources.

Contemporary studies of onomastics note that geographical names often “travel” from one language to another and, in the process, adapt to the phonetic, morphological and orthographic rules of the host language. These transformations represent a natural evolution of toponyms, conditioned by linguistic contacts and long-term historical developments. It is in this sense that the use of the forms Ferizović, Verisović, Ferisovitsch and Verisovitch should be seen, which do not represent new names, but orthographic variants and multilingual adaptations of the same historical toponym. For this reason, they should not be confused with the name Uroševac, which represented a new toponym, institutionalized by the Serbian state administration after the 1912 occupation.

also Culture Supplement July 26, 2026 Serbification with Uroševac for Ferizaj, Skopje for Skopje...

Even Albanian historiography, relying on Serbian archival documents, claims that the name change was not carried out immediately after the occupation. Shaban Hashani notes that the Serbian military administration initially continued to use the form Ferizović, while the name Uroševac began to be used gradually during 1913. According to him, the final officialization occurred only with the decision of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Serbia of January 16, 1914, which also approved the official dictionary of names of settlements of the so-called “Southern Serbia”. This proves that Uroševac was not a traditional name, but the result of a deliberate state decision for the symbolic transformation of the occupied space.

Skopje: name change as an act of occupying authority

A similar process occurred in Skopje. Contemporary evidence of the policy of changing toponyms is also found in the Austro-Hungarian press of the time. The Viennese newspaper “Neue Freie Presse”, in its issue of November 6, 1912, announced that, immediately after the entry of the Serbian army into Skopje, the city “acquired a new name” (Der Ort Usküb erhielt nach dem siegriechen serbischen Einzug den neuen Namen Skoplje). On the same day, the newspaper reported that King Peter had entered the city, while the traditional name Üsküb (Uskub) was immediately replaced with the Serbian form Skoplje. The Austrian press of the time recorded the change of Skopje’s name as one of the first symbolic acts of Serbian power after the occupation of the city in 1912. With the entry of the Serbian army, the inscription “Üsküb” at the railway station was removed and replaced with the Serbian form “Skoplje”. This action did not simply represent a linguistic adaptation of the toponym, but symbolically marked the end of Ottoman administration and the beginning of the political, administrative and cultural integration of the city into the Serbian state. The change of the city's name was, in this sense, part of a broader policy of transforming the nomenclature of the occupied territories and affirming Serbian sovereignty through toponymy.

In the same vein, the Austro-Hungarian newspaper “Volksfreund” published a photograph of the Skopje railway station with the caption: “Zur Besitzung von Usküb durch die Serben” (“On the occupation of Üsküb by the Serbs”), treating the change of power as a political fact and documenting the beginning of the administrative and symbolic transformation of the city. The case of Skopje shows that the renaming was immediately used as a sign of the authority of the new government.

also Arberi July 25, 2026 Serbian toponyms are "maintained" by the veto of Serbian MPs

In Ottoman documents and European consular reports, the city is usually listed as Üsküb, Uskub or Uskup, while after the Serbian conquest, the form Skoplje, or Skopje, was institutionalized. The change was not a simple linguistic adaptation, because it was carried out in the context of the replacement of the Ottoman administration, the suppression of local institutions and the imposition of the Serbian language in administration, education and public life. Austro-Hungarian reports from the period 1870–1912 identify Skopje as the administrative center of the Vilayet of Kosovo and consistently use the forms Skopje and Üsküb in a multilingual context, without presenting the city as an exclusively Serbian space (Schmitt & Frantz, 2020, pp. 133–144, 219–258).

To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement