Is It 'Rumania' or 'Romania?' Part One
I just want to set down a little basic historical information about this nation located in southeastern Europe. I hope some of you will take an interest and head to your local library to learn more about "Rumania" ... I mean "Romania." Actually, the form "Rumania," which I still use, is now considered outdated, with "Romania" being the preferred spelling. A good deal of my reading about this country over the years was done about its participation in World War Two, and it was done reading German text, which uses "Rumanien," so that likely has reinforced the use of "u" with me. I also recall seeing the spelling "Roumania," but I can't recall just where. Anyway, here's just a very brief sketch of "Rumania," the spelling I'll use. American readers should take note that somewhere between 500,000 and about a million Americans are of Rumanian descent.* For Clevelanders, a prominent Rumanian-American neighborhood has been on the near West Side in the Detroit-Shoreway area, where there have traditionally also been many Italian-Americans. There is a Rumanian Byzantine church on W. 65th Street and a Rumanian Orthodox church is located further out on the West Side of Cleveland on Warren Road.
The present day Rumanians trace back to an Indo European people called the Thracians, who also were known to some as the "Dacians," and indeed the Romans, who conquered the area inhabited by the Dacians in circa 105 A.D., called their colony "Dacia." This brought Latin to the region, and after all of these centuries, Latin is still the base of the modern Rumanian language, although a small number of words are presumed to have remained from Dacian, as these words do not seem to be linked to other languages which have had influences on Rumanian, like Slavic, which has provided a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary. German has also had some influence on vocabulary, as a sizable German settlement took place in Transylvania, known as "Siebenbürgen" in German (Seven Castles or Fortresses, after seven German fortified cities in the area).**
As Rome's empire struggled to endure incursions from invaders and internal strife, the Roman presence in Dacia diminished. Dacia too saw numerous invaders, including Magyars,*** who occupied the Transylvania area, although "seemingly" the native Dacians remained in the overall majority. The main regions of the area in southeastern Europe associated with Rumania are: Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania, but Bukovina, Dobruja, Bessarabia and part of the Banat also have connections, although often contested by other countries, as has been the case with much of Transylvania.**** One of the historical debates about the Rumanians has involved their ancestry. Generally, Rumanians have said they are from the Dacians, who withdrew to safer areas to avoid the invaders who rampaged through their territory. As the invasions subsided, these people gradually moved back into their former lands. This "history" certainly has support, as the Latin dialect continued to be spoken by the people, later known as Vlachs, which would seem to tie in with the Latin speaking Dacians of previous centuries. I'll come back to this in "Part Two," which will follow shortly.
* From U.S. Census Bureau.
** A number of these Germans, generally known as "Transylvanian Saxons," immigrated to Cleveland beginning in the late 1800s, and indeed the "Alliance of Transylvanian Saxons" is headquartered here on Pearl Road (in the Cleveland suburb of Parma).
*** The Magyars were an ancient people generally believed to have been from the area of western Asia, in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains. Like many tribes, they moved around, eventually moving into Europe and settling in what is now the general area of Hungary, where they formed the basis for the modern Hungarians. As with all of the groups mentioned in this article, extensive modern DNA testing will provide better information on the history of the various ethnic groups in history, thus "perhaps" superseding some of the assumptions made by historians over time.
**** When nobles ruled the various parts of Europe, they acquired lands through conquest, heredity or marriage, often irrespective of the ethnic-linguistic composition of any given area. Natural resources were often a major driving force to acquire an area, as such resources could provide a direct economic benefit, and could also be a powerful source of economic benefit by selling or trading those resources, or a specific resource, with those in need of such. For example, in more modern times, when oil and its derivatives came into prominence for fuel, nations with large oil reserves became very important. As nationalism among ethnic groups developed, especially more from the 1800s onward, boundary adjustments based upon those ethnic groups became a major source of confrontation, not that the national resource or industrial benefit of an area no longer mattered.
I consulted the following sources for this article:
"Kingdoms of Europe" (Chapter 17, Kingdom of Romania) by Gene Gurney, published by Crown Publishers, Inc. NY 1982
"Romania/An Illustrated History" by Nicolae Klepper, published by Hippocrene Books, NY 2002
WORD HISTORY:
Map-This word "seems" to trace back to some Semitic language source, as Hebrew has "mappa," which seems to have meant "cloth," thus, "banner." The Semitic languages are a group of related languages "centered" in the Middle East and eastern Africa, but also spoken beyond those areas. The most common modern Semitic languages are Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew and Tigrinya,^ but in ancient times it included Phoenician, which was spoken in the Middle East and in North Africa by the Carthaginians, a people who had much contact with the Romans, and thus, Latin. Latin borrowed the word as "mappa," which meant "cloth," thus "tablecloth, towel, napkin, banner." This was then used in a compound by Latin as "mappa mundi," which meant "map of the world," with "map" essentially meaning "cloth with drawings of geographic features." Old French, a Latin based language inherited the term as "mapemonde, which was later shortened to just "mappe" in common speech. English borrowed the longer expression from French in the early 1500s, but quickly picked up the shortened version as "map."
^ Arabic and Hebrew are commonly known in much of Europe and North America, but Amharic is spoken in a large part of Ethiopia. Tigrinya is also spoken in parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea, another East African nation.
The present day Rumanians trace back to an Indo European people called the Thracians, who also were known to some as the "Dacians," and indeed the Romans, who conquered the area inhabited by the Dacians in circa 105 A.D., called their colony "Dacia." This brought Latin to the region, and after all of these centuries, Latin is still the base of the modern Rumanian language, although a small number of words are presumed to have remained from Dacian, as these words do not seem to be linked to other languages which have had influences on Rumanian, like Slavic, which has provided a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary. German has also had some influence on vocabulary, as a sizable German settlement took place in Transylvania, known as "Siebenbürgen" in German (Seven Castles or Fortresses, after seven German fortified cities in the area).**
As Rome's empire struggled to endure incursions from invaders and internal strife, the Roman presence in Dacia diminished. Dacia too saw numerous invaders, including Magyars,*** who occupied the Transylvania area, although "seemingly" the native Dacians remained in the overall majority. The main regions of the area in southeastern Europe associated with Rumania are: Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania, but Bukovina, Dobruja, Bessarabia and part of the Banat also have connections, although often contested by other countries, as has been the case with much of Transylvania.**** One of the historical debates about the Rumanians has involved their ancestry. Generally, Rumanians have said they are from the Dacians, who withdrew to safer areas to avoid the invaders who rampaged through their territory. As the invasions subsided, these people gradually moved back into their former lands. This "history" certainly has support, as the Latin dialect continued to be spoken by the people, later known as Vlachs, which would seem to tie in with the Latin speaking Dacians of previous centuries. I'll come back to this in "Part Two," which will follow shortly.
* From U.S. Census Bureau.
** A number of these Germans, generally known as "Transylvanian Saxons," immigrated to Cleveland beginning in the late 1800s, and indeed the "Alliance of Transylvanian Saxons" is headquartered here on Pearl Road (in the Cleveland suburb of Parma).
*** The Magyars were an ancient people generally believed to have been from the area of western Asia, in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains. Like many tribes, they moved around, eventually moving into Europe and settling in what is now the general area of Hungary, where they formed the basis for the modern Hungarians. As with all of the groups mentioned in this article, extensive modern DNA testing will provide better information on the history of the various ethnic groups in history, thus "perhaps" superseding some of the assumptions made by historians over time.
**** When nobles ruled the various parts of Europe, they acquired lands through conquest, heredity or marriage, often irrespective of the ethnic-linguistic composition of any given area. Natural resources were often a major driving force to acquire an area, as such resources could provide a direct economic benefit, and could also be a powerful source of economic benefit by selling or trading those resources, or a specific resource, with those in need of such. For example, in more modern times, when oil and its derivatives came into prominence for fuel, nations with large oil reserves became very important. As nationalism among ethnic groups developed, especially more from the 1800s onward, boundary adjustments based upon those ethnic groups became a major source of confrontation, not that the national resource or industrial benefit of an area no longer mattered.
I consulted the following sources for this article:
"Kingdoms of Europe" (Chapter 17, Kingdom of Romania) by Gene Gurney, published by Crown Publishers, Inc. NY 1982
"Romania/An Illustrated History" by Nicolae Klepper, published by Hippocrene Books, NY 2002
WORD HISTORY:
Map-This word "seems" to trace back to some Semitic language source, as Hebrew has "mappa," which seems to have meant "cloth," thus, "banner." The Semitic languages are a group of related languages "centered" in the Middle East and eastern Africa, but also spoken beyond those areas. The most common modern Semitic languages are Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew and Tigrinya,^ but in ancient times it included Phoenician, which was spoken in the Middle East and in North Africa by the Carthaginians, a people who had much contact with the Romans, and thus, Latin. Latin borrowed the word as "mappa," which meant "cloth," thus "tablecloth, towel, napkin, banner." This was then used in a compound by Latin as "mappa mundi," which meant "map of the world," with "map" essentially meaning "cloth with drawings of geographic features." Old French, a Latin based language inherited the term as "mapemonde, which was later shortened to just "mappe" in common speech. English borrowed the longer expression from French in the early 1500s, but quickly picked up the shortened version as "map."
^ Arabic and Hebrew are commonly known in much of Europe and North America, but Amharic is spoken in a large part of Ethiopia. Tigrinya is also spoken in parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea, another East African nation.
Labels: Cleveland, Dacians, English, etymology, Hungarians, Latin, Romania, Romans, Rumania, Rumanian language, Semitic languages, Transylvanian Saxons, Vlachs
posted by Randy at 10:29 AM
2 Comments:
grew up by 70th Detroit ave in clevleand and u r right lots of Romanians in that general area.
"Thracia" and "Dacia" being the same meaning/word - language was super flexible back then and there were various different pronunciations and spellings. This seems to be a common mistake many people make when searching for language roots - they are too literal about the spellings and cannot realize variations. Very good post Randy.
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