Names of Kosovo - Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo (Serbian Cyrillic: Косово, pronounced ) is the Serbian neuter possessive adjective of kos (кос) "blackbird", an ellipsis for Kosovo Polje "field of the blackbirds", the site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field. The name of the field was applied to an Ottoman province created in 1864. In Greek the full name of the historical region is Kossyfopèdio meaning field (-pèdio) of the blackbirds (Kossyfi-).

The use of these spelling variants is a highly sensitive political issue for both Serbs and Albanians, who regard the use of the other side's name as being a denial of their own side's territorial rights.

Kosovo is not given the definite article ("the Kosovo") in English. Albanian usage varies (Kosova vs. Kosovë). The question does not arise in Serbian, which has no definite article. French has the definite article, le Kosovo. In German, no article, or the masculine or neuter articles, are variously used (Kosovo, der Kosovo, das Kosovo). In Portuguese, both forms are commonly used - the form without the article was the preferred form when the region began to appear frequently in the news; nowadays, a trend has been observed both in Portugal and Brazil of using the definite masculine article "o Kosovo".