20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Timokenian and Danubian Romanians. Ethnological perspective 903flee from boyars’ lands due to the benefits the received in the OttomanEmpire, faced with depopulation. Also, an exodus was produced duringthe enforcement of the Organic Regulation. In Bulgaria, even today, theRomanians, descendents of those Romanians who fled 80-100 years agofrom Romania, are called “ţăreni” (of the country). This shows the fact thatthere is another Romanian population layer, an older one, naming thosewho came “ţăreni”, the same way as in Oltenia, those who came fromTransylvania were called “ungureni” (Hungarians).Another information from Baikal: “How is our kin developed? Thegrandfather Ion Ciocan is from Baikal, he goes in Orlea and chooseseldmother Todora, a Romanian. And he starts a family, and Mihai is born,and Mihai comes here and finds Stana, he takes her to Orlea, has six childrenthere, one pair of twins, my mother and her sister, they come here and getmarried. Well, this is how our family spreads here, Orlea and Baikal”. 11From an ethnographic point of view, there are few differencesbetween the three population groups form the Timokanian area (of forest,of valleys, of plains), these differences losing relevance in time. In fact,there are here more layers of Romanian population, a mixture made inthe last four centuries. There is an old native Romanian population in thisarea of Romanian ethno genesis that was thinned and pressed by Slavicpopulation. This is revealed in the toponyms, old names of places. Evennowadays, Timokanian Romanians still call Vidin Dii 12 , its ancient name.Emanoil Bucuţa concluded: “All peasants call Vidin by the name of Dii. Itis its old name, from old documents, and nobody else but them knows it.Weigand writes in a quite entangled fashion, not so much about the origin,as about its relationship with local Romanians and its actual pronunciation.The old Bulgarian form was Бъдыиь, the Hungarian one – Bodon, theRomanian – Diu. Weigand also remembers of a form heard in Luche,Serbia, Dźii, and proposes a name that Romanians from Vidin used, Vd’ie,which was most likely developed, as the current Bulgarian one, Vidin, from11Marinov Rumen Morov, 56 years old, field information, Baikal, Bulgaria, July2009.12“Vlach, the word itself, it is not a bad word. Something more, this word has anancient history base, but belongs to history, we know it. Between us, we never called usVlachs, as we never say Vidin when we refer to Dii. I make an analogy between the twoterms, because there is a specific Romanian terminology, we call ourselves Romaniansand it is normal and natural, because this is the old transcription also, which was fromRomania. Some argue that the idea of Vlachs would be an idea that represents our roots.It might be so also, but in the end they are not right, because our root is Romanian, as weknow ourselves, as we call ourselves. Others call us Vlachs”. Quote from an interviewwith Ivo Gheorghiev, the president of AVE Association, June 2009.