Origin of Romanians

[Szegedist]

Scholars who support the immigrationist theory propose that the Romanians descended from the Romanized inhabitants of the provinces to the south of the Danube, which were under Roman rule for more than 500 years. Following the collapse of the empire's frontiers around 620, some of this population moved south to regions where Latin had not been widely spoken. Many of them took refuge in the Balkan Mountains where they adopted nomadic pastoralism – an itinerant form of sheep- and goat-breeding. Their mobile lifestyle contributed to their spread in the mountainous zones.

The Romanians' ancestors came into close contact with sedentary Slavic-speaking communities in the 10th century at the latest. They adopted Old Church Slavonic liturgy in the First Bulgarian Empire, and preserved it along with their Orthodox Christian faith even after their northward migration across the Danube began.They were first employed as border guards along the southeastern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary and later settled in the sparsely inhabited regions of the kingdom. Although sheep-breeding remained their principal economic activity for centuries, their permanent settlements are also documented from the 1330s

[There] is not a single name of a river, a mountain, or a place in Romania which could prove the plausibility of the survival of a language island, even solely in a smaller territory, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Whereas whole Romania is entwined with conclusive geographical names which excludes any form of continuity there.
Schramm, Gottfried (1997)


The longer tributaries of the large rivers had modern names of German, Hungarian, Slavic or Turkic origin, which were also adopted by the Romanians. For instance, the tributaries of the Someșul Mic River bear Hungarian or Slavic names. River names of Slavic origin[note 15] can also be found in the regions east and south of the Carpathians, where Turkic river names[note 16] also abound.[361] On the other hand, the name of the Vlaşca region in Wallachia refers to a Romance-speaking community in Slavic environment.

Place names of Slavic or Hungarian origin can be found in great number in medieval royal charters pertaining to Banat, Crișana, Maramureș, and Transylvania. The earliest toponyms of certain Romanian origin, including Nucşoara (1359), and Cuciulata (1372), were recorded in the second half of the 14th century. Romanian place names can still be detected in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia.For example, such names are concentrated in the wider region of the river Vlasina both in Bulgaria and Serbia, and in Montenegro and the nearby territories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Romanians


More toponyms of Transylvania
http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/faf/toc38.htm

[Onur]

[There] is not a single name of a river, a mountain, or a place in Romania which could prove the plausibility of the survival of a language island, even solely in a smaller territory, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Whereas whole Romania is entwined with conclusive geographical names which excludes any form of continuity there.
Schramm, Gottfried (1997)

The longer tributaries of the large rivers had modern names of German, Hungarian, Slavic or Turkic origin, which were also adopted by the Romanians. For instance, the tributaries of the Someșul Mic River bear Hungarian or Slavic names. River names of Slavic origin[note 15] can also be found in the regions east and south of the Carpathians, where Turkic river names[note 16] also abound.[361] On the other hand, the name of the Vlaşca region in Wallachia refers to a Romance-speaking community in Slavic environment.

I posted a msg here before about the Turkic heritage in today`s Romania, an article written by a Romanian historian;

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...d-surroundings

There are 10s of Turkic river, lake, mountain names listed in the article. All are from Pecheneg, Cumans.

[Anglojew]

Thanks, interesting. I thought Romanians were settlers during the Roman period?

[baraSYR]

One of my relatives have ancestors back to Romania, he have green eyes and red hair.

[Anglojew]

I've met Romanians in Australia with really dark skin. Are they Gypsies that say they're Romanians or is that what Romanians look like?

Not trolling just wondering.

[Szegedist]

I've met Romanians in Australia with really dark skin. Are they Gypsies that say they're Romanians or is that what Romanians look like?

Not trolling just wondering.

It could be both.

Thanks, interesting. I thought Romanians were settlers during the Roman period?

That is a common myth. Some Romanians think they are the direct descendants of Roman legionaries.

[Mans not hot]

Latinised Paleo-Balkans aka Vlachs with significant Slavic influence.

[Pro_Patria]

Yes, this is why our language is extremely Latin

[Szegedist]

Only the remnants of a Latin-speaking population survived in parts of the central and west-central Balkans; when it re-emerges into the historical record in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find its members leading a semi-nomadic life as shepherds, horse-breeders and travelling muleteers. These were the Vlachs, who can still be seen tending their flocks in the mountains of northern Greece, Macedonia and Albania today.[14] The name 'Vlach' was a word used by the Slavs for those they encountered who spoke a strange, usually Latinate, language; the Vlachs' own name for themselves is 'Aromanians'(Aromani). As this name suggests, the Vlachs are closely linked to the Romanians: their two languages (which, with a little practice, are mutually intelligible) diverged only in the ninth or tenth century.[15] While Romanian historians have tried to argue that the Romanian-speakers have always lived in the territory of Romania (originating, it is claimed, from Romanized Dacian tribes and/or Roman legionaries), there is compelling evidence to show that the Romanian-speakers were originally part of the same population as the Vlachs, whose language and way of life were developed somewhere to the south of the Danube. Only in the twelfth century did the early Romanian-speakers move northwards into Hungarian territory.

The main area of the Balkan interior where a Latin-speaking population may have continued, in both towns and country, after the Slav invasion, has already been mentioned: it included the upper Morava valley, northern Macedonia, and the whole of Kosovo. It is, therefore, in the uplands of the Kosovo area (particularly, but not only, on the western side, including parts of Montenegro) that this Albanian-Vlach symbiosis probably developed.[71] All the evidence comes together at this point. What it suggests is that the Kosovo region, together with at least part of northern Albania, was the crucial focus of two distinct but interlinked ethnic histories: the survival of the Albanians, and the emergence of the Romanians and Vlachs. One large group of Vlachs seems to have broken away and moved southwards by the ninth or tenth century; the proto-Romanians stayed in contact with Albanians significantly longer, before drifting north-eastwards, and crossing the Danube in the twelfth century.

Kosovo, Origins: Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs - Noel Malcolm
www.promacedonia.org/en/nm/kosovo.html
Origins: Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs. Chapter 2 in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo, a short history (Macmilan, London, 1998, p. 22-40).

[Vesuvian Sky]

I've always wondered how much Dacian ancestry Romanians have.