History of the Vlach term

The history of the term Vlach starts in the Slavic languages after the lexical loan with the Gotique of the very old Germanic word Walh . This term in general designates the populations of Romance languages with which the Slavic ones with contacts, but the semantic range was reduced with time in about all the languages. In certain languages and in connection with certain people, Vlach was also transformed into geographical term.

The word gotic 'Walh is borrowed in theSlavic one from the neighborhoods of VIIe century. However, the first written source using the word are the writings of the historian bizantin Kedrenos in the middle of XIe century.

With time, the semantic field of the word Vlach narrows even its direction changes completely:

Autonomous

The term is in the beginning a exonyme, when the Wallachians used various terms derived from romanus to speak about themselves ( români, rumâni, rumâri, aromâni, arumâni , armâni etc), but there are some exeptions:

the Aromaniens of Greece, more often use " Βλάχοι" (Vlachoi) that " Αρμάνοι" (Armanoi) in the Greek language.

the Mégléno-Roumanians are alone populates it which uses exclusively the term Vlach ( Vlashi ) car-to be indicated. The end of the use of a name derived from Romanus arrived at the beginning of the 19th century century.

the Rumanian minority of Serbia living in Timočka Krajina, although he speaks a dialect about standard Rumanian, continue to be indicated like Vlachs . In the Yugoslav censuses, Aroumains of Macedonia and the Roumanians of Serbia are both classified like Vlachs .

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