Romanians
Români

Marthe Bibesco • Constantin Brâncuşi • Dimitrie Cantemir • Henri Coandă • Mihai Eminescu • George Enescu • Avram Iancu • Nicolae Iorga • Mihail Kogălniceanu • Titu Maiorescu • Inocenţiu Micu-Klein • Nadia Comăneci
Total population
23,4 million native speakers of Romanian[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
Romania 16,869,816 (2011 Census) [3]
Italy1 968,576 - 1,500,000 additional 130,948 Moldovans [4][5][6]  Spain1 864,278 - 1,000,000 additional 20,000 Moldovans [7][8][9][10]  United States 518,653 [11]  Ukraine 150,989 additional 258,619 Moldovans [12]  Germany1 126,536 - 200,000 [13][14]  Canada 79,650 - 192,170 incl. of mixed origin [15]  Moldova 73,529 additional 2,741,849 Moldovans [16]  United Kingdom 60,000 [17]  France 50,000 [18]  Austria 36,000 [18]  Serbia 34,576 additional 40,054 Vlachs [19]  Portugal1 32,457 additional 20,773 Moldovans [20]  Greece1 25,375 additional 9,920 Moldovans [21] Cyprus1 24,376 [22]  Sweden 21,016 born in Romania [23]  Australia 18,320 [24]  Netherlands1 15,785 [25]  Argentina 10,000 [26]  Hungary 7,995 [27]  Ireland1 7,696 [28]  Denmark 6,000 [29]  Norway 5,500 [29]  Russia 5,308 additional 172,330 Moldovans [30]  Czech Republic1 5,069 [31]  Switzerland 5,000 [32]  Japan 3,300 [33]  New Zealand 3,000 [34]  South Africa 3,000 [35]  Lithuania 1,350 [36]  Turkey1 1,304 [37]  Bulgaria 891 additional 3,684 Vlachs [38]  Kazakhstan 421 additional 14,245 Moldovans [39]
Languages
Romanian
Religion
Predominantly † Orthodox Christianity (Romanian Orthodox Church), small Roman Catholic, Protestant and other minorities
Related ethnic groups
Other Romance speaking peoples and other Southeast European peoples; see also: Vlachs, Moldovans, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians
Footnotes
1 The number of the citizens of Romania is indicated in the countries Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Turkey, and the number of the citizens of Moldova in the additional figure in the same countries.

The Romanians (dated: Rumanians or Roumanians; in Romanian: români pronounced [roˈmɨnʲ] or — historically, but now a seldom-used regionalism — rumâni; dated exonym: Vlachs) are an ethnic group^[34] native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania.

The Romanian people are a nation in the meaning of ethnos (Romanian: etnie), defined by the sense of sharing a common Romanian culture, descent, and having Romanian as mother tongue, as well as by citizenship or by being subjects to the same country. The Romanian citizenship law^[40] legislated in March 1991 establishes the rights of second and third generation descendants of Romanian citizens to obtain a Romanian citizenship, if they speak fluent Romanian and are able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge in Romanian history and culture. 89.4 percent of Romania's people declared themselves as Romanians at the 2002 Romanian Census.

In one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well.^[41][42] Romanians are also an ethnic minority in several nearby countries.

History[link]

Ancient times[link]

Inhabited by the ancient Dacians, today's territory of Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire in 106, when Trajan's army defeated the army of Dacia's ruler Decebalus (see Dacian Wars). The Roman administration withdrew two centuries later, under the pressure of the Goths and Carpi.

The Romanian people was formed by the Romanization of the Roman Province of Dacia. The Romanians are descended from local populations: Dacians (Getae, Thracians) and Roman legionnaires and colonists. In the course of the two wars with the Roman legions, between 101–102 AD and 105–106 AD respectively, the emperor Trajan succeeded in defeating the Dacians and the greatest part of Dacia became a Roman province. The colonization with Roman or Romanized elements, the use of the Latin language and the assimilation of Roman civilization as well as the intense development of urban centres led to the Romanization of part of the autochthonous population in Dacia. This process was probably concluded by the 10th century when the assimilation of the Slavs by the Daco-Romanians was completed.^[43]

Small genetic differences were reportedly ^[44] found among Southeastern European (Greece, Albania) populations and especially those of the Dniester–Carpathian (Romania, Moldova, Ukraine) region. Despite this low level of differentiation between them, tree reconstruction and principle component analyses allowed a distinction between Balkan–Carpathian (Romanians, Moldovans, Ukrainians, Macedonians and Gagauzes) and Balkan Mediterranean (Greeks, Albanians, Turks) population groups. The genetic affinities among Dniester–Carpathian and southeastern European populations do not reflect their linguistic relationships. According to the report, the results indicate that the ethnic and genetic differentiations occurred in these regions to a considerable extent independently of each other.

Middle Ages[link]

Regions with green inhabited by significant Eastern Romance speakers

During the Middle Ages Romanians were mostly known as Vlachs, a blanket term ultimately of Germanic origin, from the word Walha, used by ancient Germanic peoples to refer to Romance-speaking and Celtic neighbours. Besides the separation of some groups (Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians) during the Age of Migration, many Vlachs could be found all over the Balkans, in Transylvania,^[45] across Carpathian Mountains ^[46] as far north as Poland and as far west as the regions of Moravia (part of the modern Czech Republic), some went as far east as Volhynia of western Ukraine, and the present-day Croatia where the Morlachs gradually disappeared, while the Catholic and Orthodox Vlachs took Croat and Serb national identity.^[47] Because of the migrations that followed – such as those of Slavs, Bulgars, Hungarians, and Tatars – the Romanians were organized in agricultural communes (obști), developing large centralized states only in the 14th century, when the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the Ottoman Empire.

The entire Balkan peninsula was annexed by the Ottoman Empire, but Moldavia, Wallachia (extending to Dobruja and Bulgaria), and Transylvania remained autonomous under Ottoman suzerainty. The three principalities were united for several months in 1600 under the authority of Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave.

But there were two lands by the "Vlach" name - the other Wallachia, the Greek Duchy of Wallachia was in Central Greece surrounded by the Pindus mountains where the Byzantine Empire was, but outside the empire. It was located north of Athens in the 11th to 13th centuries, but they fell to the Ottoman Turks by the 1400s.

Up until 1541, Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, later (due to the conquest of Hungary by the Ottoman Empire) was a self-governed Principality governed by the Hungarian nobility. In 1699 it became a part of the Habsburg lands. By the 19th century, the Austrian Empire was awarded by the Ottomans with the region of Bukovina and, in 1812, the Russians occupied the eastern half of Moldavia, known as Bessarabia.

Modern age[link]

Territories inhabited by Romanians before World War I.

Territories inhabited by Romanians at the beginning of the 21st Century

In 1821 and 1848, two rebellions occurred, and both failed; but they had an important role in the spreading of the liberal ideology. In 1859, Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same ruler – Alexander John Cuza (who reigned as Domnitor) and were thus unified de facto.

The newly founded Kingdom of Romania—led by the Hohenzollern prince Carol I—fought a War of Independence against the Ottomans, and was recognized in 1878. Although allied with Austria-Hungary, Romania refused to go to enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, because Romania was obliged to go to war only if Austria-Hungary was attacked. In 1916, Romania joined the war on the side of the Triple Entente. As a result, at the end of the war, Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina were awarded to Romania, resulting in Greater Romania.

During World War II, Romania lost territory in both east and west, as Northern Transylvania became part of Hungary through the Second Vienna Award, while Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were taken by the Soviets and included in the Moldavian SSR and Ukrainian SSR respectively. The eastern territory losses were facilitated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop German-Soviet non-aggression pact.

The Soviet Union imposed a Communist government and King Michael was forced to abdicate and leave for exile. Nicolae Ceauşescu became the head of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965 and his draconian rule of the 1980s was ended by the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

The 1989 revolution brought to power the dissident communist Ion Iliescu. He remained in power until 1996, and then once more between 2000 and 2004. Emil Constantinescu was president from 1996 to 2000, and Traian Băsescu started his mandate in 2004.

Romania joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007.

Language[link]

The origins of the Romanian language, a Romance language, can be traced back to the Roman colonization of the region. The basic vocabulary is of Latin origin, although there are some substratum words that are assumed to be of Dacian origin. Of all the Romance languages, in some respects, Romanian is the most conservative language, having retained, for example, the inflected structure of Latin grammar. Romanian's closest relative among the major Romance languages is Italian, with which it shares a certain degree of asymmetric mutual intelligibility.

During the Middle Ages, Romanian was isolated from the other Romance languages, and borrowed words from the nearby Slavic languages. Later on, it borrowed a number of words from Hungarian and Turkish. During the modern era, most neologisms were borrowed from French and Italian, though the language has increasingly begun to adopt English borrowings.

The Moldovan language, in its official form, is practically identical to Romanian, although there are some differences in colloquial speech. In the de-facto independent (but internationally unrecognized) region of Transnistria, the official script used to write Moldovan is Cyrillic.

A 2005 Ethnologue estimation puts the (worldwide) number of Romanian speakers at approximately 23.5 million.^[48] The 23.5 million, however, represent only speakers of Romanian, not all of whom are necessarily ethnic Romanians. Also, this number does not include ethnic-Romanians who no longer speak the Romanian language.

Surnames[link]

Many Romanian surnames have the suffix -escu or (less commonly) -aşcu or -ăscu which corresponds to the Latin suffix -iscus and means "belonging to the people". For example, Petrescu used to be Petre's son. Similar suffixes such as -asco, -asgo, -esque, -ez, etc. are present in other Latin-derived languages.

Many Romanians in France changed this ending of their surnames to -esco, because the way it is pronounced in French better approximates the Romanian pronunciation of -escu. Other suffixes are -eanu (or -an, -anu), which indicates the geographical origin and -aru (or -oru), which indicates an occupation. The ending -ei, usually preceded by A- in front of a female name, is a Latin inherited female genitive, like in Amariei "of Maria", Aelenei "of Elena". These matrilineal-rooted surnames are common in the historical region of Moldavia.

The most common surnames are Popa ("the priest")—almost 200,000 Romanians have this surname^[49]—Popescu ("son of the priest") —almost 150,000 have this name^[49]— and Ionescu ("John's (Ion's) son").

Another widespread suffix of Romanian surnames is "-eanu" or "-anu" meaning the provenience of the person. Here some examples: Pruteanu (meaning from the Prut river), Mureşanu (meaning from the Mureş river), Moldoveanu (meaning from the river Moldova or the region Moldova), Petreanu (meaning the son of Petre) etc.

Names for Romanians[link]

In English, Romanians are usually called Romanians, Rumanians, or Roumanians except in some historical texts, where they are called Roumans or Vlachs.

Etymology of the name Romanian (român)[link]

The name "Romanian" is derived from Latin "Romanus". Under regular phonetical changes that are typical to the Romanian languages, the name romanus over the centuries transformed into "rumân" [ruˈmɨn]. An older form of "român" was still in use in some regions. Socio-linguistic evolutions in the late 18th century led to a gradual preponderance of the "român" spelling form, which was then generalized during the National awakening of Romania of early 19th century.

Until the 19th century, the term Romanian denoted the speakers of the Daco-Romanian dialect of the Romanian language, thus being a much more distinct concept than that of Romania, the country of the Romanians. Prior to 1867, the (Daco-)Romanians were part of different statal entities: with the Moldavians and the Wallachians being split off and having shaped separate political identities, possessing states of their own, and with the rest of Romanians being part of other states. However, they retained their Romanian cultural and ethnic identity.

Daco-Romanian[link]

To distinguish Romanians from the other Romanic peoples of the Balkans (Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians), the term Daco-Romanian is sometimes used to refer to those who speak the standard Romanian language and live in the territory of ancient Dacia (today comprising mostly Romania and Moldova), although some Daco-Romanians can be found in the eastern part of Central Serbia (which was part of ancient Moesia).

Etymology of the term Vlach[link]

The name of "Vlachs" is an exonym that was used by Slavs to refer to all Romanized natives of the Balkans. It holds its origin from ancient Germanic - being a cognate to "Welsh" and "Walloon" -, and perhaps even further back in time, from the Roman name Volcae, which was originally a Celtic tribe. From the Slavs, it was passed on to other peoples, such as the Hungarians (Oláh) and Greeks (Vlachoi) (see the Etymology section of Vlachs). Wallachia, the Southern region of Romania, takes its name from the same source.

Nowadays, the term Vlach is more often used to refer to the Romanized populations of the Balkans who speak Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. Istro-Romanian is the closest related language to the Daco-Romanian language which is the official language of the country.

Anthroponyms[link]

These are family names that have been derived from either Vlach or Romanian. Most of these names have been given when a Romanian settled in a non-Romanian region. Examples: Oláh (37,147 Hungarians have this name), Vlach, Vlahuta, Vlasa, Vlasi, Vlašic, Vlasceanu, Vlachopoulos, Voloh, Bolog/Balogh, Volyh, Vlack, Flack and Vlax.

Romanians outside Romania[link]

Most Romanians live in Romania, where they constitute a majority; Romanians also constitute a minority in the countries that neighbour Romania. Romanians can also be found in many countries, notably in Italy, Spain, the United States, France, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal. With respect to geopolitical identity, many individuals of Romanian ethnicity in Moldova prefer to identify themselves as Moldovans.^[41][42] The contemporary total population of ethnic Romanians cannot be stated with any degree of certainty. A disparity can be observed between official sources (such as census counts) where they exist, and estimates which come from non-official sources and interested groups. Several inhibiting factors (not unique to this particular case) contribute towards this uncertainty, which may include:

• A degree of overlap may exist or be shared between Romanian and other ethnic identities in certain situations, and census or survey respondents may elect to identify with one particular ancestry but not another, or instead identify with multiple ancestries;^[50]

• Counts and estimates may inconsistently distinguish between Romanian nationality and Romanian ethnicity (i.e. not all Romanian nationals identify with Romanian ethnicity, and vice versa);^[50]
• The measurements and methodologies employed by governments to enumerate and describe the ethnicity and ancestry of their citizens vary from country to country. Thus the census definition of "Romanian" might variously mean Romanian-born, of Romanian parentage, or also include other ethnic identities as Romanian which otherwise are identified separately in other contexts;^[50]

For example, the decennial U.S. Census of 2000 calculated (based on a statistical sampling of household data) that there were 367,310 respondents indicating Romanian ancestry (roughly 0.1% of the total population).^[51] The actual total recorded number of foreign-born Romanians was only 136,000 Migration Information Source However, some non-specialist organizations have produced estimates which are considerably higher: a 2002 study by the Romanian-American Network Inc. mentions an estimated figure of 1,200,000^[52] for the number of Romanian-Americans. This estimate notes however that "...other immigrants of Romanian national minority groups have been included such as: Armenians, Germans, Gypsies, Hungarians, Jews, and Ukrainians". It also includes an unspecified allowance for second- and third-generation Romanians, and an indeterminate number living in Canada. An error range for the estimate is not provided. For the United States 2000 Census figures, almost 20% of the total population did not classify or report an ancestry, and the census is also subject to undercounting, an incomplete (67%) response rate, and sampling error in general.

Culture[link]

Contributions[link]

Romanians have played a major role in the arts, sciences and engineering.

In the history of flight, Traian Vuia and Aurel Vlaicu built and flew some of the earliest successful aircraft, while Henri Coandă discovered the Coandă effect of fluidics. Victor Babeş discovered more than 50 germs and a cure for a disease named after him, babesiosis; biologist Nicolae Paulescu discovered insulin. Another biologist, Emil Palade, received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to cell biology. George Constantinescu created the theory of sonics, while mathematician Ştefan Odobleja is regarded as the ideological father behind cybernetics - his work The Consonantist Psychology (Paris, 1938) was the main source of inspiration for N. Wiener's Cybernetics (Paris, 1948). Lazăr Edeleanu was the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine and also invented the modern method of refining crude oil.

In the arts and culture, prominent figures were George Enescu (music composer, violinist, professor of Sir Yehudi Menuhin), Constantin Brâncuşi (sculptor), Eugène Ionesco (playwright), Mircea Eliade (historian of religion and novelist), Emil Cioran (essayist, Prix de l'Institut Francais for stylism) and Angela Gheorghiu (soprano). More recently, filmmakers such as Cristi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu have attracted international acclaim.

Romanian shepherds. Painting by Ion Theodorescu-Sion

In sports, Romanians have excelled in a variety of fields, such as football (Gheorghe Hagi), gymnastics (Nadia Comăneci, Lavinia Miloşovici etc.), tennis (Ilie Năstase, Ion Ţiriac), canoe racing (Ivan Patzaichin) and handball (four times men's World Cup winners). Count Dracula is a worldwide icon of Romania. This character was created by the Irish fiction writer Bram Stoker, based on some stories spread in the late Middle Ages by the frustrated German trademen of Kronstadt (Braṣov) and on some Balkan folklore tales about the historic Romanian figure of Prince Vlad Ţepeş.

Religion[link]

Ninety-eight percent of Romanians consider themselves religious. The vast majority are Eastern Orthodox Christians, belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church (a branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, or Eastern Orthodox Church, together with the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Churches, among others). According to the 2002 census, 94.0% of ethnic Romanians in Romania identified themselves as Romanian Orthodox (in comparison to 86.8% of Romania's total population, including other ethnic groups). However, it must be noted that the actual rate of church attendance is significantly lower, and that many Romanians are only nominally believers. For example, according to a 2006 Eurobarometer poll, only 23% of Romanians attend church once a week or more.^[53] A 2006 poll conducted by the Open Society Foundation found that only 33% of Romanians attended church once a month or more.^[54]

Romanian Catholics are present in Transylvania, Bucharest, and parts of Moldavia, belonging to both the Romanian Greek-Catholic Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Smaller percentages are Protestant, neo-Protestant (2.8%), Jews, Muslims, atheist, pagan or agnostic (0,15%). Although generally tolerated by the Orthodox Church, the minority religious, spiritual and philosophical views and beliefs co-exist somewhat uneasily.

There are no official dates for the adoption of religions by the Romanians. Based on linguistic and archaeological findings, historians suggest that the Romanians' ancestors acquired polytheistic religions in the Roman era, later adopting Christianity, certainly by the 4th century CE when decreed by Emperor Constantine as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Like in all other Romance languages, the basic Romanian words related to Christianity are inherited from Latin, such as God ("Dumnezeu" < Domine Deus), church ("biserică" < basilica), cross ("cruce" < crux, -cis), angel ("înger" < angelus), saint (regional: "sân(t)" < sanctus), Christmas ("Crăciun" < creatio, -onis), Christian ("creştin" < christianus), Easter ("paşte" < paschae), sin ("păcat" < peccatum), to baptize ("a boteza" < batizare), priest ("preot" < presbiterum), to pray ("a ruga" < rogare), faith ( "credinţă" < credentia ), and so on.