20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

904 Emil Ţîrcomnicuthe Greek Bιδύνη, (the Bulgarians stress Vidin). What the Lipsca professorheard in Serbia is the actual name, the only one, given to Vidin by allRomanians, only soaked in Banat dialect.What could Vd’ie be, besides an undecipherable etymological diagram,we cannot tell. Dii is a word similar to Jii and Sibii, and, in the same way,articulated, lose the plural appearance, same as Dii”. 13After Emanoil Bucuţa showed in 1923 that there are three ethnographicpopulations in the Timok area, indicating three different directions thatthese populations used in order to establish themselves in this land betweenDanube and Timok, “the people of valleys” and “the people of plains”from Dolj and Mehedinti respectively, while “the people of forests” camefrom Serbia, which is partially true, for a small number of population. In1942, in the preface of the three volumes of studies and sources, made byC. Constante and A. Golopenţia 14 , he wrote: “Romanians from the rightbank of the Danube were and were in a different country and were not.A wide stream of water links more than it divides the inhabitants of thetwo banks. Transitions, especially from us to them, took place in all times,especially in those times when a new people was taking shape. Only for afew years now, ever since there is talk about union and solidarity betweenStates, the borders between them got locked with a hundred locks. Othersbelieved, and, even funnier, we believed that all these Romanians wereethnic overflow from our lands. We had nothing different to find in them,since they were not different people, they were us. They were a kind ofRomanians who had left abroad… I also visited these Romanians, on severaloccasions, the Bulgarians more, the Serbians less. Those who live deeper inthe country, as those who live closer to the borders either know or they donot know about the free country of their Northern brothers, they recognizethemselves as Romanians through memories, language and customs. Theygave themselves narrower names, as they were seated in a valley or in aneasily distinguished land forming, a plain, field or valley, but they nevercalled themselves, all of them together, Oltenians, Muntenians or Banat. Awave of Romanian population from Banat, Oltenia and Muntenia arrivedon the other side of the Danube, at dates and due to matters which can befollowed. Being newer than the indigenous and noisier for history, theycould show themselves to researchers as Oltanian, Muntenian or BanatianRomanians. They are no more than they claim to be today. The indigenous,13Emanoil Bucuţa 1923, Românii dintre Vidin şi Timoc, Bucharest, 7.14C. Constante, A. Golopenţia 1942-1944, Românii din Timoc, RomanianNational Statistics Institute, vol. I-III, Bucharest.