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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 competing, even if not logically exclusive, theories:

1. Romanization of the Dacians;
2. Romanians are Dacians (Dacians spoke a language close to Latin);
3. Migration of Romanic peoples from South.

Romanization of the Dacians

After the Romans conquered Dacia in 106, a process of Romanization of the local populations took place, Dacians adopting the Roman language and customs. This is the classical theory of Daco-Romanian continuity, supported by most Romanian historians.

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 - Somes, Marisia - Mures, Porata - Prut, etc; names of cities: Petrodava - Piatra Neamt, Varadia - Oradea)
• Similarity in current Vlachian traditional clothes and Dacian clothes as portraited on Trajan's column

Arguments against:

• The short time of occupation (only 165 years)
• Romans conquered only about 20% of Romania (parts of Transylvania and Oltenia)
• 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.

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 this region.
• Romanian grammar has some classic Latin features that cannot be found in any other Romance language.

Arguments against:

• No ancient source claims that the language of Dacians is close to Latin.

Migration from South

A Romanic population came from South in the Middle Ages and settled down in Dacia. This theory is largely supported by Hungarian historians, supporting the irredentists' claim of Transylvania.

Arguments for:

• Common words with Albanian, thought to be of Thracian or Illyrian origin. However, opponents claim that Dacians were probably a Thracian tribe, so the common words with Albanian (see above) could have come from the Dacian language.
• There are Vlachs living South of 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, but there are very few records about this region in the Dark Ages. All historical sources prior 12th century indicate presence of Vlachs in areas south of Danube (in Thracia, Moesia etc). For example in 11th century Vlachs from present day Bulgaria (under Peter Asen) rose against Constantinopol to create the Empire of Bulgarians and Vlachs.
• Romanian toponyms in Albania and Bulgaria. ()
• Vlach shepherds sometimes migrated northwards with their herds in search of better pastures. For example they moved along Carpathian Mountains to present day Poland and even to the Czech Republic. They influenced very significantly culture and language of Polish and Ukrainian highlanders.
• According to Roman sources population of Dacia was evacuated south of 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. If Romanians had come from a region to the north of Albania, they would have been under Serbian influence rather than Bulgarian-Macedonian. And the regions to the east and south of Albania were Greek-speaking, not Latin-speaking parts of the Roman empire. However this is easy to explain as historical and archeological sources indicate that southern part of Romania has been colonized by Slavic tribes speaking dialects close to Old Bulgarian (6th century).
• Romanian lacks any Greek loanwords for religious terms, the Orthodox branch of Christianity being brought to them by the Slavs, so it shows there was a Slavic buffer zone between Greece and the Romanians.
• Romanian is very different from Dalmatian, so they probably developed in distant regions (however, it could be developed in distant from Dalmatia, Romanized provinces of Thracia and Moesia).
• Dacian toponyms were kept (names of rivers: Samus - Somes, Marisia - Mures, Porata - Prut, etc; names of cities: Petrodava - Piatra Neamt, Varadia - Oradea)
• A 11th century Hungarian chronicle affirms that when the Magyars arrived in Pannonia, surrounding areas were inhabited by Vlachs (Romanians).
• No medieval chronicle mentions large-scale migrations of Romanic peoples from the Balkans to Romania.

External Links

• Friesian.com: The Vlach Connection