The Karst Shepherd is named after the Karst Plateau in Slovenia and more generally after the Karst landscape that extends to Croatia and partly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the Gulf of Trieste to the Dinaric Alps. Mostly bred in Slovenia and Istria in Croatia. The ancestral type of the modern day breed travelled with shepherds through this area, and most likely came with ancient nomadic pastoralists. In 1689, the ethnographer Johann Weikhard von Valvasor mentioned the shepherd's dogs of the area in his work The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola without description of dogs. In the 20th century, when the landrace shepherd dogs began to be documented as a modern breed, it was first referred to as the Illyrian Shepherd (1939). Karst Shephard and Šarplaninac were considered Type A and B of the Illyrian Shepherd Dog by the Yugoslavian Federation of Cynology for some time, leading to some cases of crossing between both breeds. After comparing typical dogs of both Types the Federation recognised Karst Shephard and Šarplaninac as two distinct breeds in 1968.