The tribe and its territory has not been identified and localized yet. While 19th century scholars assumed it to have been connected to early
Serbs (although they are already mentioned in the same source as
Surbi), Czech anthropologist
Lubor Niederle and Polish historian
Kazimierz Tymieniecki also considered it as a corruption of either
Sarmatians or
Severians. Modern Polish scholars like
Henryk Łowmiański argued it as a corrupted form of the name of the Severians. It is argued that the connections with the Serbs is impossible because the Northern Serbs lived on other part of Europe which also doesn't fit with the list, and the Serbian ethnonym was never written with the Slavic suffix
-jane (
-eani), while the tribal name of the Severians was written in both collective
Sever and plural
Severjane form, etymologically implying Severian tribes.
Gerard Labuda considered those tribes arrived from the
Lesser Poland and western Ukraine, while Ryszard Kiersnowski assumed the Zeriuani were a relic of a large group which lived along the river
Oder, but as there was no recorded tribe with such a name in those parts it also indicates the Ruthenian and Balkan Severians. A more probable etymological derivation of both
Zeriuani and
Zuierani, although their mutual connection is doubtful, However, based on the location of other tribes and phenomenological reasons, it is also possible to be a corruption of the name of
Drevlians. ==See also==