The title etymological and functional origins are unknown. It was used as "evidence" throughout the history of historiography to prove ideological assumptions on Avars, and specific theories on the origin of early medieval Croats. The starting point of the debate was year 1837, and the work of historian and philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik, whose thesis has influenced generations of scholars. In his work "Slovanské starožitnosti" (1837), and later "Slawische alterthümer" (1843) and "Geschichte der südslawischen Literatur" (1864), was the first to connect the ruler title of "ban", obviously not of Slavic lexical stook, which ruled over župas of today Lika region, with the Pannonian Avars. He concluded how Avars lived in that same territory, basing his thesis on a literal reading of the statement from Constantine VII's 30th chapter, "there are still descendants of the Avars in Croatia, and are recognized as Avars". However, modern historians and archaeologists until now proved the opposite, that Avars never lived in Dalmatia proper (including Lika), and that statement occurred somewhere in Pannonia. Šafárik assumed that the Avars by the name word "bayan" called their governor, and in the end concluded that the title "ban" derives from the "name-title" Bayan, which is also a Persian title word (see Turkish "bey" for Persian "bag/bay"), and neglected that it should derive from the Slavic name Bojan. His thesis would be later endorsed by many historians, and both South Slavic titles ban and župan were asserted as Avars official titles, but it had more to do with the scholar's ideology of the time than actual reality.