Etymology
The demon’s name in the standard Serbian, ala, comes from dialects which lost the velar fricative, while hala is recorded in a Serbian dialect which has retained this sound and in Bulgarian. For this reason, it is believed that the original name had an initial h-sound, a fact that has led Serbian scholar Ljubinko Radenković to reject the etymology given by several dictionaries, including that of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, by which the demon’s name comes from the Turkish word ‘ala’ (snake) as that word lacks the h-sound. The name may instead stem from the Greek word for hail, χάλαζα (pronounced ; transliterated chalaza). This etymology is proposed by Bulgarian scholar Ivanichka Georgieva, and supported by Bulgarian scholar Rachko Popov and Serbian scholars Slobodan Zečević, and Sreten Petrović. According to Serbian scholar Marta Bjeletić, ala and hala stem from the noun *xala in Proto-South-Slavic, the dialect of Proto-Slavic from which South Slavic languages emerged (x in xala represents the voiceless velar fricative). That noun was derived from the Proto-Slavic root *xal-, denoting the fury of the elements.
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