The Romanians (români in present-day Romanian and rumâni in historical contexts) are an ethnic group; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania and of Moldova (where they are also called "Moldovans", a disputed term); each of these countries also has other significant ethnic minorities, and the Romanians constitute an ethnic minority in several nearby countries. In historical contexts, they are sometimes referred to as the Vlachs, from a Slavic term for this ethnic group.
Map of Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted
Population
Most Romanians live in Romania and Moldova, where they constitute a majority; Romanians also constitute a minority in the countries that neighbour them. Romanians can be found in many countries as immigrants, notably in the United States, Canada and Germany.
History
Main article: History of Romania
Ancient Times
Inhabited by the ancient Dacians, today's territory of Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire in 106, when Trajan's army defeated the army of Decebalus. The Romans administration withdrew two centuries later, under the pressure of the Goths and Carpi.
Middle Ages
The invasions that followed, such as the ones of Slavs, Hungarians and Tatars did not allow Romanians to develop any large centralized state, which was only achieved in the 13th century when the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the Ottoman Turks.
The entire Balkan peninsula became included in the Ottoman Empire, but Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania remained autonomous, under Ottoman suzerainty. The three principalities were united in 1600 by Wallachian Mihai Viteazul, but he was assassinated soon.
Up until 1699, Transylvania was ruled by Hungarians, but in 1699 it became part of the Austrian Empire. By the 19th century, Austrians also occupied the region of Bukovina and in 1812, the Russians occupied the eastern half of Moldavia, called Bessarabia.
Modern Age
In 1821 and 1848, two revolutions occurred, both failed, but they had an important role in the spreading of the liberal ideology. In 1859, Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same ruler - Alexander John Cuza and thus they were unified.
Romania, lead by German Prince Carol I fought the War of Independence against Turkey, which was recognized in 1878. In 1916, Romania joined World War I on the Entente side and at the end of it, Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina chose union with Romania, resulting in Greater Romania.
During World War II, Romania lost territory in both east and west, as a part of Transylvania was awarded for a time to Hungary (later it returned to Romania), and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were taken by the Soviets and included in the Moldavian SSR and Ukrainian SSR.
The Soviet Union imposed by force to Romania a Communist government and the King Michael had to abdicate and leave into exile. Ceauşescu became the head of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965 and his draconian rule of the 1980s was stopped by a Revolution in 1989.
An ex-communist restyled as social democrat, Ion Iliescu became the head of state until 1996 and between 2000 and 2004, during most of the transition toward a democracy and market economy. These years were marked by occasional violence, the Mineriads, when the miners of Jiu Valley were called in by Iliescu to attack his political adversaries.
Romania joined NATO in 2002 and is expected to join the European Union in 2007.
Culture
Contribution to humanity
See main article: List of Romanians
Romanians have played an important role in the arts, sciences and engineering.
In the history of flight, Traian Vuia who built the first self-propelling heavier-than-air aircraft, while Henri Coandă who built the first aircraft powered by a jet engine. Emil Palade received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to cell biology.
In the arts and culture, important figures were George Enescu (music composer), Constantin Brâncuşi (sculptor), Eugène Ionesco (playwright), and Emile Cioran (essayist).
Language
Main article: Romanian language
The origins of Romanian language, a Romance language, can be traced to the Roman colonization of Dacia, after its conquest in 106. The basic vocabulary is of Latin origin, although there are some substratum Dacian words. Of the Romance languages it could be said that Romanian is the most archaic, having retained, for example, the inflected structure of Latin grammar.
During the Middle Ages, Romanian was isolated from the other Romance languages, and borrowed words especially from the nearby Slavic languages. The Turkish occupation enriched the language with a picturesque Turkic vocabulary by now thoroughly integrated into everyday speech. During the modern era, most neologisms were borrowed from French and Italian, though increasingly the languages is falling under the sway of English borrowings.
In Moldova, the language is named Moldovan, mostly for political reasons.
Surnames
Many Romanian names have the surname suffix -escu, which used to be a patronymic. (for example, "Petrescu" used to be the son of "Petre") Many Romanians of France changed their ending in -esco, because the way it is pronounced "-cu" in French. Other suffixes are "-eanu", which indicates the geographical origin and "-aru", which indicates the occupation.
The most common surnames are Ionescu ("son of John") and Popescu ("son of the priest").
Religion
Romanians have no official date of adoption of Christianity. It appears that they were Christianized during the Roman era, as suggested by archeological findings and by Romanian words for church ("biserică" < basilica), God ("Dumnezeu" < Domine Deus), Easter ("Paşte" < Paschae), etc.
It is possible that the Romanians adhered to the Old Bulgarian Church, since early medieval Bulgarian tsars claimed authority over the territories inhabited by the Vlachs. After the Great Schism, there existed a Catholic Diocese of Cumania (later Wallachia) on the territory of Romania. Basarab I (ruler of Wallachia) baptised his son into Eastern Orthodoxy, and after that date the Romanian Church employed Old Church Slavonic as ecclesiastical language, until the 17th century, when the Bible was first translated into Romanian.
Nowadays most Romanians belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church. Romanian Catholics can be found especially in Transylvania, belonging to both the Eastern Rite (Romanian Catholic Church) and the Roman Rite (Roman Catholic Church).
Symbols
The colours of blue, yellow and red, which are now used on the both the flag of Romania and the flag of Moldova were used by the nationalist movement of 1820s, but it is clear that they were even older, some suggest that they can be traced to the military flag of the Byzantine province of Moesia.
In addition to these colours, each historical province of Romania has its own characteristic animal symbol:
The Coat of Arms of Romania combines these together.
Customs
Main article: Romanian customs
(to be written)
Name
In English they are usually called Romanians or Rumanians except in some historical texts, where they are called Vlachs.
Romanian
The name "Romanian" is derived from Latin "Romanus". Under regular phonetical changes that are typical to the Romanian languages, the name was transformed in "rumân" (ru'mɨn). An older form of "român" was still in use in some regions. During the National awakening of Romania of early 19th century, the latter form was preferred, in order to emphasise the link with ancient Rome.
Vlach
The name of "Vlachs" is an exonym that was used by Slavs to refer the Latin peoples. It has its origin in ancient Germanic, being a cognate to "Welsh" and "Walloon". From the Slavs, it was passed on to other peoples, such as the Hungarians (Olah) and Greeks (Vlachoi) and was used for all Latin people of the Balkans. (see: Etymology of Vlach)
Nowadays, the term Vlach is more used to refer to the Romanized populations of the Balkans which do not speak the Romanian language but rather the Aromanian language and other Romance languages such as Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian are the closest related languages to the Romanian language.
Toponyms
In the Middle Ages, Romanian shepherds migrated with their flocks in search of better pastures and reached Southern Poland, Croatia, Greece, and Eastern Thrace. This explains the number of place names derived from "Vlach" in the Balkans and beyond.
Anthroponyms
These are family names that have been derived from either Vlach or Romanian. Most of these names have been given when a Romanian settled in a non-Romanian region.
- Oláh (37,147 Hungarians have this name)
- Vlach
- Vlahuţă
- Vlasa
- Vlašić
- Vlăsceanu
- Vlachopoulos
Subgroups
Daco-Romanians
The Daco-Romanians are the people speaking the standard dialect of Romanian and living in the territory of ancient Dacia (mostly Romania and Moldova), although some of them can be found in Serbia (which was part of ancient Moesia). Generally, when it is referred to Romanians, it means Daco-Romanians.
Istro-Romanians
The Istro-Romanians are speaking a dialect of Romanian and it is believed they left Maramureş, Transylvania about a thousand years ago and settled in Istria, Croatia.Nowadays, they number around 500 people.
Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians
The Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians speak the languages that are closest to Romanian and linguists believe that the two languages split between the 7th and 9th century. Whether these are languages or only dialects is under debate, as is the geographic origin of the Romanians. (See Origin of Romanians)
See also
Notes and references
- 1 "Milioane de români pe drumul emigrarii" ("Millions of Romanians on the emigration road"). Evenimentul Zilei, date unknown, posted to web May 10, 2004.
- 2 "Românii din diaspora" ("Romanians in diaspora") on the site of The Foundation for Romanians from All Over the World, captured December 24, 2004.
- 3 "Românii din strainatate nu prea merg la votare", ("Most Romanians abroad will not go to vote"). Jurnalul Naţional , date unknown but presumably autumn 2004, captured December 24, 2004.
- 4 Romanian language on Ethnologue.
- 5 The number for Germany does not count some half million ethnic Swabians whose families historically lived in Transylvania, and who relocated to Germany at various times in the 20th century.
- 6 The number for Israel does not count 450,000 Jews of Romanian origin.
- 7 BBC: "Minoritatea românilor din Serbia este nemulţumită" ("The Romanian minority in Serbia is discontent")
