title needs a logical continuity. He doubted its existence among Slavic tribes during the great migration, and within early South Slavic principalities. He strongly supported the Šafárik thesis about Avar descendants in Lika, now dismissed by scholars, and concluded that in that territory they had a separate governor whom they called bajan, from which after Avar assimilation, became Croatian title ban. The thesis of alleged Avar governor title Šišić based on his personal derivation of bajan from the title khagan. Nada Klaić advocated the same claims of Avars descendants in Lika, and considered bans and župans as Avar officials and governors. The latter conclusion by Šišić and Klaić was previously loosely opposed by Rački, who studying old historical records observed that ban could only be someone from one of the twelve Croatian tribes according to Supetar cartulary. This viewpoint is supported by the Chronicle of Duklja; Latin redaction; Unaquaque in provincia banum ordinavit, id est ducem, ex suis consanguineis fratribus ([Svatopluk] in every province allocated a ban, and they were duke's consanguin brothers); Croatian redaction defines that all bans need to be by origin native and noble. The mainstream view of the time was mainly opposed by Stjepan Krizin Sakač, who emphasized that the word bajan is never mentioned in historical sources as a title, the title ban is never mentioned in such a form, and there's no evidence that Avars and Turks ever used a title closely related to the title ban. Sakač connected the Croatian bân with statements from two Persian dictionaries (released 1893 and 1903); the noun bàn (lord, master, illustrious man, chief), suffix bân (guard), and the Sasanian title merz-bân (مرزبان marz-bān, Marzban). He considered that the early Croats originated from the Iranian-speaking Sarmatians probably Alans and Aorsi. The view of the possible Iranian origin (from ban; keeper, guard), besides Avarian, was shared by the modern scholars like Vladimir Košćak, Horace Lunt and Tibor Živković. 21st century In the 21st century, historians like Mladen Ančić (2013) and Neven Budak (2018) in their research and synthesis of Croatian history concluded that the Avar linguistic argumentation is unconvincing and the historical sources poorly support such a thesis, emphasizing rather the Frankish origin of the title. Ančić emphasized that Avarian derivation is related to cultural and political ideologization since the 19th century which avoided any association with Germanization and German heritage. According to him, the title and its functions