Origin of Romanians
The Romanians (and Vlachs) are a nation speaking Romanian, a Romance language and living in Central and Eastern Europe. The Origin of Romanians has been for a long time disputed and there are several theories:
- Daco-Romanian continuity;
- Dacians spoke a language close to Latin and they evolved into Romanians;
- Migration of Romanic peoples from South.
The origin of Romanians is not only a scientific puzzle, but also a heated political controversy. Hungarian historians largely support the migration theory. Most Romanian historians support the theory of Daco-Romanian continuity and disregard the migration theory. Thus each side claims that its nation settled down in Transylvania before the other.
Daco-Romanian continuity
After the Romans conquered Dacia in 106, a process of Romanization of the local populations took place, Dacians adopting the Roman language and customs. Romans left Dacia (about 273), but Romanized Dacians continuously lived in Dacia since then and Romanians are their descendants.
Arguments for:
- Extensive colonization of Dacia
- The colonists came from different provinces of the Roman empire.
They had no common language except for Latin. In this multiethnic environment Latin, being the only common language of communication, might have quickly achieved the dominating position (American history furnishes similar examples).
- Dacian toponyms were kept (names of rivers: Samus - Someş, Marisia - Mureş, Porata - Prut, etc; names of cities: Petrodava - Piatra Neamt, Abruttum - Abrud) (It should be noted, however, that the preservation of toponyms only indicates continuous settlement, and not necessarily continuous settlement by the same people.)
- Similarity in current Vlachian traditional clothes and Dacian clothes as portraited on Trajan's Column
- Numerous archeological sites prove the continuity of Latin settlement north of the Danube after the evacuation of 273.
Arguments against:
- The short time of occupation (only 165 years)
- Romans conquered only about 20% of Romania (parts of Transylvania and Oltenia); however, the Romanic people may have assimilated the Dacians after the Roman retreat
- Most colonists were brought from distant provinces of the Roman Empire and they could not have spoken a language as close to literary Latin as Romanian.
- After the Roman withdrawal, a Dacian tribe (the Carpians - living in Moldavia) conquered the abandoned areas and probably imposed their language.
- There are no written documents confirming that Romanic peoples lived in Dacia in the period between the Roman evacuation of Dacia and the 10th century.
- There are no traces of Teutonic influence in Romanian and we know that in the 5th and 6th centuries Dacia was inhabited by Teutonic tribes.
- According to Roman sources the population of Dacia was evacuated south of the Danube.
Dacians spoke a language close to Latin
This theory says that the Dacians spoke a language very close to Latin, thus Romanization was achieved much faster.
Arguments for:
- It is thought that the Latins came to Italy in the around 1000 BC from the Danube region.
- Romanian grammar kept some Latin features (case system, neuter gender, etc) that cannot be found in any other Romance language (opponents claim that these may have been kept due to the Dacian or Slavonic grammar influence over the language).
Arguments against:
- No ancient source claims that the language of Dacians is close to Latin.
- Toponyms and personal names suggest that Dacian belonged to another branch of the Indo-European language tree (satem, while Latin was centum)
Migration from South
A Romanic population came from the south in the Middle Ages and settled down in present-day Romania.
Arguments for:
- Common words with Albanian in Romanian, thought to be of Thracian or Illyrian origin (opponents claim that the Proto-Albanian and Dacian languages were probably related and the common words could have come from the Dacian language).
- There are Vlachs living South of the Danube speaking a dialect of Romanian (in Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, etc). They used to live also in mountains of present-day Bulgaria. There are mentions of their presence there from the early Middle Ages. Languages of Southern Vlachs and Romanians are too close to suppose that they evolved independently through 1800 years.
- There are no traces of Teutonic influence in Romanian and we know that in the 5th and 6th century Dacia was inhabited by Teutonic tribes.
- There are no written documents confirming that Romanic peoples lived in Dacia in the period between the Roman evacuation of Dacia and the 10th century (opponents point out that there are very few records about this region in the Dark Ages). But many medieval sources indicate presence of Vlachs in areas south of the Danube. See also: History of Vlachs.
- Romanian toponyms in Albania and Bulgaria. ()
- Vlach shepherds migrated northwards with their herds in search of better pastures. For example they moved along the Carpathian Mountains to present day Poland and even to the Czech Republic. They influenced very significantly the culture and language of Polish and Ukrainian highlanders.
- According to Roman sources the population of Dacia was evacuated south of the Danube (opponents allege that only a part of the population was evacuated).
Arguments against:
- Slavic languages exerted an enormous influence on Romanian. But linguistic analyses of Romanian show that these Slavic languages were dialects of the Bulgarian-Macedonian group. This narrows down our search for the place where Romanian developed to the Romanic-speaking parts of the Roman Empire which were subsequently inhabited by Bulgarian-Macedonian Slavic tribes. These parts are: 1) Dacia (north of the Danube River); 2) the lands situated between the Danube and the Stara Planina mountains (currently northern Bulgaria); 3) the region of Skopje (currently northern Macedonia); 4) Albania (between the Drin River and the Vjosa River).
- Romanian is very different from Dalmatian, so they probably developed in distant regions. This suggests that Romanians could not have come from the western part of the Balkans (including Albania).
- Romanian lacks any Greek loanwords for religious terms. Romanians used Old Church Slavonic as their liturgical language, so they were probably Christianized by Bulgarian Slavs. It shows there was a Slavic buffer zone between Greeks and Romanians.
- Dacian toponyms were kept (names of rivers: Samus - Somes, Marisia - Mures, Porata - Prut, etc; names of cities: Petrodava - Piatra Neamt, Abruttum - Abrud). (It should be noted, however, that the preservation of toponyms only indicates continuous settlement, and not necessarily continouos settlement by the same people.)
- A 12th century Hungarian chronicle, Gesta Hungarorum, affirms that when the Magyars arrived in Pannonia, surrounding areas were inhabited by Vlachs (Romanians). However, this chronicle was written 250 years after the described events and does not have to be accurate.
- A chronicle by Venerable Nestor (1056 - 1136 AD) mentions Walachians fighting against Magyars north of the Danube in 6406 (898). See also: .
- No medieval chronicle mentions any large-scale migrations of Romanic peoples from the Balkans to Romania.
See also
