Arianiti
Crest of Arianiti
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| Ethnicity | Albanian |
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| Current region | Shkumbin valley, old Via Egnatia road, eastwards up to Bitola |
| Place of origin | Central Albania |
| Members | |
| Connected families |
Komnenos Kastrioti family |
The Arianiti were an Albanian noble family that ruled large areas in Albania and neighbouring areas from the 11th to the 16th century. Their domain stretched across the Shkumbin valley and the old Via Egnatia road and reached to the east today's Bitola.
The first attested surname of the family in various forms is Ar(i)aniti, which was also used as a personal name. In documents contemporary to its members Araniti is the most prevalent form, from which almost all placenames of the areas of their domains that were named after them derive. Arianiti, a rare form from the first definite documentations of the family in the late 13th and early 14th century to the extinction of its male line in the mid-16th century, became prominent in early modern era works and eventually reached a common surname status in historical discourse. The etymology of the surname is unclear; it may ultimately derive from the Indo-European word arya (noble), derivations of which can be found as placenames, denonyms or ethnonyms in many areas ranging from western Europe to Iran and northern India (cf. Areiane, the Greek name for eastern Iran) or the Albanian word arë (field).
If the placenames in Albania that are akin to arya are related to the Arianiti family and don't derive from the rule of the family over those areas, their presence as a clan could be traced back to the late 9th century in the theme of Dyrrhachium, however, its members until the late 13th century are disputed as the surname appears to have been adopted by unrelated to each other low-born individuals after they came to positions of power. One theory links the surname with the Illyrian tribe of the Arinistae/Armistae that lived around Dyrrhachium in the Hellenistic and Roman era.
A secondary surname used by the Arianiti family since the 14th century was Komneni surname, which derives from the Byzantine imperial house of Komnenos. The first of the family to bear was possibly married to a female descendant of Golem of Kruja and could be related to a Comneni Budaresci princeps, who lived around 1300 in central Albania, although any connection to any member can't be verified as all Arianitis used Komneni as a second surname by the mid to late 14th century as a means to strengthen their noble status and territorial claims.
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