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Origin of Romanian people and language
Romania, a name used by the Byzantines to describe the territory under their control, and, more particularly, by the Western powers to describe the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204 – 61). The name is derived from "Rome," the Byzantine Empire being the successor to the Roman Empire. Romania is also a variant of Rumania.
Ethnic Origins. The Rumanian people, like all national groups in Eastern Europe, are of extremely mixed ethnic origins in the main they appear to derive from the Thracian peoples who lived in the region in the late prehistoric and Roman times, but they incorporated many other elements: the Roman settlers of the second century A.D., the slave invaders of the 7th and 8th centuries, Magyar invaders of the 9thand 10th centuries, as well as Turks, Germans, gypsies, and Jews. Other groups, the Celts, Goths, and Tatars at some time occupied some part of Rumania, and must have influenced the racial composition of its people.
This variety of ethnic origin is reflected in the physical diversity of the Rumanian people. In terms of head shape there is a marked contrast between the brachycephalic peoples of the mountains and Transylvania, and the mesocephalic peoples of the eastern and southern plains. This division ignores language and ethnic tradition. In general the Rumanians are of medium height, 5ft. 5 1/3 in. - 5ft. 5 3/4in. (166-167 cm.) though somewhat shorter in the northwest. Pigmentation shows greater variation; coloration is predominately dark in the southeast, but over much of the country people are of medium to dark coloration, with a tendency for brunets to predominate. In a few areas, notably Transylvania, a blonde type is numerous.
At the time when much of Rumania was conquered by the Romans, it was thinly peopled by Thracian tribes, which have come to be known as Dacians. They already possessed a complex racial history, and to this complexity the Romans contributed other elements. According to Rumanian tradition, Romans settled there in sufficient numbers to impart a veneer of Latin civilization to the region. Supposedly after the withdrawal of the Roman armies the romanized provincials maintained their Latin language and culture in the fastnesses of the mountains, and from this stock was gradually fashioned the Rumanian nation. It is more commonly held that the Rumanians are a part of a wider group of romanized Dacians, known as Vlachs. Their language, like Rumanian, is largely derived from Latin, and they are the descendants of the romanized inhabitants of the Balkans, as the Rumanians also claim to be. There is, however, this important difference: the ancestors of the Vlachs of the Balkan peninsula lived under Roman rule for many centuries, whereas Roman occupation of Dacia was relatively short-lived. Vlachs of the Balkans are known to have migrated northward across the Danube, and at one time were numerous in Slovakia. Some writers, especially Hungarian and Slav, doubt whether the Rumanians are the descendant of the romanized Dacians and suggest that they derive from these Balkan Vlachs. The truth may perhaps lie between the two extremes, and the Rumanians of today probably derive from romanized Dacians, reinforced by Vlachs from beyond the Danube.
After the withdrawal of the Romans from Dacia, the region was invaded and probably also settled by Goths and other Germanic tribes, by invaders from the Russian steppe, and by peoples from central Europe. The cultural and linguistic pattern of many areas of Rumania was drastically changed, and undoubtedly many of these immigrant peoples were assimilated to the Rumanian people, losing their own linguistic and cultural traits in consequence. Nethertheless, the Rumanian language today has absorbed a great many Slavic and other elements.
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Rumanians – These people, who are locally called Vlachs, are the most scattered of all the people of the Balkans. They have a common language, of Latin derivation, and a common pastoral nomadic economy, but their racial type varies widely from region to region. In Walachia, for example, the main element in the population resembles that of Bulgaria to the south, being of medium height, with dark hair and eyes, narrow forehead and nose and head of medium breadth. These features indicate a tall variety of the Mediterranean race. Farther north in Moldavia, where the Rumanian plain abuts on the black earth region, there is a higher proportion of individuals of the Neo-Danubian race, fairer and with flatter and broader faces and more snub noses. To the west, however, just over the crest of the Carpathians in Bukovina, the Vlach population belongs to the Dinaric race. Their heads are appreciably broader and larger than those of the plains folk, their stature taller, their faces longer and broader, their noses larger and more prominent and the backs of their heads much flatter. The Vlachs of Macedonia and Istria appear also to belong substantially to the same tall, dark, prominent-nosed and broad-headed Dinaric race.
In short the Vlachs have no racial uniformity but represent the descendants of the aborigines who, during the 150 years of Roman rule in the province of Dacia, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., adopted something of the language and civilization of their rulers. After the withdrawal of Roman rule they were scattered by the various incursions of the Goths, Slavs, Bulgars and Turkic peoples, but survived in isolated mountain districts in many parts of the Balkans, especially in Macedonia, northern Greece and southern Albania, where they took to a pastoral, seminomadic economy. Their physical features no doubt varied from one district to another at the time when they first came under Roman influence, and have since become even more localized as a result of intermixture of the various groups with their immediate neighbours.
The Slavic word Vlach means "foreigner," and it appears to be related to the terms Welsh and Walloon in Western Europe.
Not only are the Vlachs or Rumanians proper, as defined by language and culture, widely scattered through the Balkans outside Rumania, but the inhabitants of Rumania itself are very mixed, and in the district of Dobruja, for example (a small plateau enclosed between the Black sea and the lower reaches of the Danube),E. Pittard remarked, besides the Vlachs, representatives of the following peoples: Bulgars, Ottoman Turks, Gaguz, Armenians, Kurds, Circassians, gypsies and Jews. These last two groups form important minorities throughout the Balkans, and since they are particularly concentrated in Rumania, it will be convenient to consider them at this point.
Vlachs, the collective name for a European people comprising not only the major element in the population of Rumania and in that of the Moldavian S.S.R (politically Rumanian before World War II) but also peoples widely disseminated over the Balkan Peninsula south and west of the Danube. The family thus extends, sporadically, from the Adriatic coast to the Bug River.
The name Vlach is derived from the Volokh, the designation given to the race by its Slav neighbours in the middle Ages. The Slavs seem to have taken this designation from the Germanic Welsch, the generic name given by Germans in the 4th to 5th centuries A.D. to the peoples who spoke non-Germanic languages, such as Romance. The Vlachs themselves prefer to be styled Romani, Romeni, Rumeni, or Aromani. Some English writers call them all simply Rumanians; others, to avoid the risk of equating the Vlachs as a whole with their representatives in political Rumania, call them Rumans.
History.- The Vlachs, who traditionally insist on their Latin origin, claim to be the descendants of the ancient Romans who occupied Illyria, Moesia, and Dacia. When allowance is made for the fusion of the Romans with the original inhabitants of those provinces and for the later introduction of alien strains by invasions (Goths, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars, and Magyars), this claim must be conceded. Illyria and Moesia, however to the west and to the south of the Danube, were occupied by the Romans far longer than Dacia, which the emperor Aurelian evacuated c .A.D. 270; and in the early middle ages, when the Rumans or Vlachs as such emerge into history, their centre of gravity was south of the Danube. The shift of their centre of gravity to the north, that is, to its present position (in political Rumania), took place later in the middle ages, most probably through migration and colonization rather than through the natural increase of and Daco-Roman population surviving there continuously from Aurelian's time.
The emergence of a specifically Illyrian type of Romance language can be discerned in the 6th century A.D., when the Byzantine historian Procopius cites place-name as of a recognizable Ruman type and when records of the Byzantine campaigns of 587 against the Avars and the Slavs cite phrases used by Romance-speaking soldiery. In the late 7th century the Bulgars established themselves south of the Danube and subjected the Ruman population; but by the 8th the occurrence of the Latin names Paganus and Sabinus suggest that the Rumans were already providing rulers of the Bulgarian Kingdom. The Byzantine historian Cedrenus, who states, c. 976, that the Bulgarian tsar Samuel's brother was murdered "by certain Vlach wayfarers" near Kastoria (between Illyria and Thessaly) provides the first mention of the people by that name.
Great Vlachia. – Anna Comnena, writing on the period 1069 – 1118, refers to a Vlach settlement centred on the mountains of Thessaly; and in the 12th century Benjamin of Tudela gives an interesting account of this Great Vlachia as an independent state. It embraced the southern and central Pindus ranges and part of Macedonia. After establishment of the Latin Empire in Constantinople by crusaders from Western Europe (1204), the Great Vlachia was absorbed by the Greek despotate of Epirus. After being annexed by the Serbs, the country fell to the 'Turks in 1393. The Turks gave some official recognition to the native Vlachs, who, however, were later very largely hellenized. Their descendants are the so-called Tzintzars of the Pindus Mountains.
Little Vlachia. – Byzantine writers give the name Little Vlachia to an area of. Ruman settlement in Aetolia and Arcanania, to the southwest of the Great Vlachia. The Tzintzars of the Aspropotamos Valley and the Karaguni ("Black Capes") of Arcanania descend from its inhabitants.
The Morlachs (Mavrovlichi) and the Cici.- People described as Nigri Latini ("Black Latins") are mentioned as inhabiting the coast of southern Dalmatia and the mountains of Montenegro, Hercegovina, and northern Albaniac.1150. There were also colonies of the Morlachs in the interior of the Ancient Serbia, notably in the region of Stara Vlaska ("Old Vlachia"). The great commercial city of Ragusa was a Ruman foundation, and Vlach speech long competed with Italian and Slavic there. In the 14th century Morlachs spread northward toward the Croatian borders, so that much of northern Dalmatia came to be known as Morlacchia. Morlach colonists from Veglia (Krk), moreover, settles in Istria in the 15th century, whence they spread as far as the Trieste and Gorizia before being confined to the eastern part of the peninsula. These Istrian Morlachs, specifically known as the Cici, represent the westernmost extension of the Vlachs. Both Dalmatian and Istrian Morlachs have been heavily slavicized.
The Vlacho-Bulgarian Empire – Bulgarian rule over the Vlachs south of the Danube was overthrown by the Byzantines in 1014, whereupon Moesia reverted to the Byzantine rule. In 1185, however, Vlachs and Bulgars together revolted against the Byzantines, to found the "empire of the Vlachs and Bulgars" under the dynasty of Asen. Extending north of the Danube over much of future Rumania, this empire prospered till 1280; and its existence may well account very largely for the momentous reinforcement of the Vlach population of the former Dacia, The traveller William of Rubruquis in the 13th century writes of all the country between the Don and the Danube as "Asen's Land" or "Blakia."
Hungary and the Hungarian Border. – The earliest Hungarian historians who describe the conquest of their country in the 9th century speak of the people whom the Magyars encountered there as Romans; and Russian chronicle of Nestor (c.1100), in a passage on the same subject, makes the Magyars fight against the Slavs and Vlachs in the Carpathians. The Byzantine Nicetas of Chonae even indicates Vlachs as far north as the Slovak country on the borders of Hungary and Galicia in 1164; and a passage in the Nibelungenlied (1200) mentions Vlachs, under their leader Ramunc, in association with the Poles. At a later date there were a few privileged Ruman communities under Hungarian rule in Transylvania; and in the Banat there were seven Ruman districts.
Source for all above extracts, Encyclopedia Britannica 1968.
Any information regarding the origins of the Romanians and their language, will be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by Redsun; 02-27-2016 at 05:51 PM.
Mad Mak
I have nothing against the romanian people but what does it have to do with Macedonian History?
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Risto the Great
Location: Macedonian Colony of Australia
I believe many Vlachs from Macedonia were Romanized Macedonians during Rome's reign.
MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
"Holding my breath for the revolution."
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Mad Mak, what is a Romanian? Did the "Romanian population" descend from a single race?
Macedonians that can speak Greek have been inappropriately called…
Macedonians that speak their own language have been inappropriately called something else other than Macedonian.
Macedonians that spoke a romanticised language have also been inappropriately mislabelled…
Misnomer – a wrong or inaccurate name or designation.
Have misnomer's against the Macedonian people been created due to language?
Post#2 first sentence… These people, who are locally called Vlachs, are the most scattered of all the people of the Balkans. They have a common language, of Latin derivation, and a common pastoral nomadic economy, but their racial type varies widely from region to region.
What is a Vlach? They are not of a single racial type.
Second last paragraph of the first post… There is, however, this important difference: the ancestors of the Vlachs of the Balkan peninsula lived under Roman rule for many centuries, whereas Roman occupation of Dacia was relatively short-lived. Vlachs of the Balkans are known to have migrated northward across the Danube, and at one time were numerous in Slovakia.
If the ancestors of the Vlachs lived under Roman rule for many centuries, what does this mean?
Originally Posted by Risto the Great
The Vlachs in Macedonia are mostly 18th century settlers, there was a large influx following the Orlov Revolt and the destruction of Moschopolis. There was migrations from Thessaly too. I think there was some settlements during the Middle-Age in Macedonia, it was too a great period of migrations of aromanians, many settlements survived until the 20th century in Greece for example. Traditionally, Vlachs were nomadic pastoralists.
I think you're going way too far by calling them "Romanized Macedonians".
Originally Posted by Redsun
To say the truth, I don't know, I don't really care.
That's true.
Macedonians speak a slavic language, a "Macedonian that spoke a romanticised language" doesn't exist.
Why are you asking?
Define race and racial type.
I don't know, "Romanian" history doesn't interest me. I just don't get the goal of this thread and why you put it in "Macedonian History".
You still didn't answer my initial question, I know you want to make a point but filling your posts with unanswered questions is a bad habit, Redsun.
Originally Posted by Mad Mak
If you read the information, you wouldn't have asked this question.You may not be interested in "Romanian history," nevertheless. The Roman military conquest in the Balkans created many ramifications against the native peoples including the Macedonians. In areas of the Balkans, portions of the native populations were killed and enslaved, this itself becomes the main focus of most studies the battles of the military conquests and the immediate consequences. One aspect commonly overlooked is the effect it had on others portions of the native populations due to land seizures, these native peoples were forced out of their own lands, resulting in a change of their lifestyles and certain customs, It is not known how many migrated Northwards and how far they reached taking into consideration the minor similarities in language between the native peoples. As for the ones who remained or returned during early Roman occupation, were they forced to live nomadically among the Romans and if so what effect would have that had on their "communication" and trade in lands now administered by a foreign tongue.
There is much to discuss, I created this thread for a better understanding of certain events which also involved us.
Many centuries divide Rome's reign and the Orlov Revolt.
What is the appropriate/correct term to denote a Macedonian that could speak the Latin language?
Your right, because that word doesn't exist. My fault.
It is more commonly held that the Rumanians are a part of a wider group of romanized Dacians, known as Vlachs. Their language, like Rumanian, is largely derived from Latin, and they are the descendants of the romanized inhabitants of the Balkans, as the Rumanians also claim to be. There is, however, this important difference: the ancestors of the Vlachs of the Balkan peninsula lived under Roman rule for many centuries, whereas Roman occupation of Dacia was relatively short-lived. Vlachs of the Balkans are known to have migrated northward across the Danube, and at one time were numerous in Slovakia. Some writers, especially Hungarian and Slav, doubt whether the Rumanians are the descendant of the romanized Dacians and suggest that they derive from these Balkan Vlachs. The truth may perhaps lie between the two extremes, and the Rumanians of today probably derive from romanized Dacians, reinforced by Vlachs from beyond the Danube.
Not all Romanized Macedonian's would have been bilingual (fluent in Latin), I doubt if there were many at all. A factor to be considered is the distance between where the Macedonian in particular reside and the location of the Roman civilization (fort or town occupied by Romans). The occupation (job/profession) of the Macedonian would have also been another factor, in the quantity and quality of their Latin language, for many it would have been merely a vocabulary, a mass of words acquired.
Romanized Macedonians may not have been bilingual (fluent), they did however have a secondary language derived of Latin and through the period of Roman occupation in the Balkans may have developed into something else.
Latin was the language of trade and Administration throughout the Roman Empire
when the Rumans or Vlachs as such emerge into history, their centre of gravity was south of the Danube. The shift of their centre of gravity to the north, that is, to its present position (in political Rumania), took place later in the middle ages, most probably through migration and colonization rather than through the natural increase of and Daco-Roman population surviving there continuously from Aurelian's time.
I asked you.
Which you replied.
Fair enough… then you ask me.
How can I not consider this a rhetorical question?
I am perplexed as to why you are so determined to hold such a stance against the information I have provided without presenting any clear upheld knowledge on Romanian history.
Have you got anything to contribute to this thread? I created this thread for a better understanding of certain events which have also involved us.
Thank you for our constructive criticism, I now acknowledge that asking open questions is not the correct procedure to acquire answers.
I do not want to create new threads, so I'm adding this here.
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