Stéphanos), meaning "crown". Early Slavs did not use the voice /f/, so the Greek Stephanos was adapted into Stjepan (Стјепан) and Stipan (Стипан) in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, Šćepan (Шћепан) in modern-day Montenegro, and Stevan (Стеван) and Stepan (Степан) in modern-day Serbia. The name has had hundreds of variants in Serbo-Croatian, most of which are hypocoristics that can now only be deduced from surnames.
This name, derived from the Greek term for "crown", was adapted to fit the phonetic characteristics of early Slavic languages, giving rise to numerous forms such as Stjepan, Stevan, and Šćepan in various countries.