The name Stephen (Serbo-Croatian: Stefan / Стефан, Stjepan / Стјепан, Stipan / Стипан, and others), long popular among South Slavic monarchs, was used as an honorific or as a royal title. It was used by various rulers, like the Trpimirović kings of Croatia, Nemanjić kings of Serbia and the Kotromanić kings of Bosnia.
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Stefan Uroš IV Dušan (Serbian Cyrillic: Стефан Урош IV Душан), also known as Dušan the Mighty (Serbian Cyrillic: Душан Силни; c. 1308 – 20 December 1355), was the King of Serbia from 8 September 1331 and Emperor of the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians from 16 April 1346 until his death in 1355. Dušan is considered one of the greatest medieval Balkan conquerors.
Dušan conquered a large part of southeast Europe, becoming one of the most powerful monarchs of the era. Under Dušan's rule, Serbia was the most powerful state in Southeast Europe and one of the most powerful European states. At the time, Serbia was an Eastern Orthodox, multi-ethnic, and multilingual empire that stretched from the Danube in the north to the Gulf of Corinth in the south, with its capital in Skopje. He enacted the constitution of the Serbian Empire, known as Dušan Code, perhaps the most important literary work of medieval Serbia. Dušan promoted the Serbian Church from an archbishopric to a patriarchate, completed his father's mausoleum Visoki Dečani Monastery (now a UNESCO site), and founded the monastery of the Holy Archangels, among others. Under his rule, Serbia reached its territorial, political, economic, and cultural peak.
Stefan Uroš II Milutin (Serbian Cyrillic: Стефан Урош II Милутин, romanized: Stefan Uroš II Milutin; c. 1253 – 29 October 1321), known posthumously as "the Holy King" (Свети краљ), was the King of Serbia between 1282–1321, a member of the Nemanjić dynasty. He was one of the most powerful rulers of Serbia in the Middle Ages and one of the most prominent European monarchs of his time. Milutin is credited with strongly resisting the efforts of Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to impose Roman Catholicism on the Balkans after the Union of Lyons in 1274. During his reign, Serbian economic power grew rapidly, mostly due to the development of mining. He founded Novo Brdo, which became an internationally important silver mining site. As most of the Nemanjić monarchs, he was proclaimed a saint by the Serbian Orthodox Church with a feast day on October 30.
Stjepan is a Croatian masculine given name, variant of Stephen. Historically it was found among ijekavian South Slavs, and it was also used as a honorific.
In Croatia, the name Stjepan was among the top ten most common masculine given names in the decades up to 1969.