>The word has a deeply rooted set of meanings in Slavic languages (never with "scl" in it within these languages; the letter was inserted in transcriptions only), and a bunch of related words. "Slava" - glory, celebration. "Slavan" - famous, glorious. "Slovo" - letter, word, speech. Basically, what I remember from that neck of history, is mostly confirmed on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs):
>There are obvious similarities to the word slovo meaning "word, talk". Thus slověne would mean "people who speak (the same language)", i.e. people who understand each other, as opposed to the Slavic word for Germans, nemtsi, meaning "speechless people" (from Slavic němi - mute, silent, dumb). Compare the Greek coinage of the term "barbarian".

So people who don't speak our language are assumed to be dumb! This seems to be a common phenomemon. I have also heard that many people call themselves "people" in their own language, perhaps implying that they are the only "real people". For example, "Inuit" means "people" in their own language. The language of the Inka empire, Quechua, is also known as "Runa Simi", meaning something like the "toungue [or mouth?] of people".