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List of Romanian words of possible pre-Roman origin

The Eastern Romance languages developed from the Proto-Romanian language, which in turn developed from the Vulgar Latin spoken in a region of the Balkans which has not yet been exactly determined, but is generally agreed to have been a region north of the Jireček Line.

That there was language contact between Latin or Vulgar Latin speakers and speakers of indigenous Paleo-Balkan languages in the area is a certainty; however, it is not known which Paleo-Balkan language or languages comprise the substratal influence in the Eastern Romance languages.

The substratal elements in the languages are mostly lexical items. Around 300 words are considered by many linguists to be of substratum origin. Including place-names and river-names, and most of the forms labelled as being of unknown etymology, the number of the substratum elements in Eastern Romance may surpass 500 basic roots. Linguistic research in recent years has increased the body of Eastern Romance words that may be considered indigenous.

In addition to vocabulary items, some other features of Eastern Romance, such as phonological features and elements of grammar (see Balkan sprachbund) may also be from Paleo-Balkan languages.

Lexical items

Older Romanian etymological dictionaries tended to assume a borrowing in many cases, usually from a Slavic language or from Hungarian, but etymological analysis may show that, in many cases, the direction of borrowing was from Romanian to the neighboring languages. The current Dicționar explicativ (DEX) published by the Romanian Academy continues to list many words as borrowings, though the work of other linguists (Sorin Olteanu, Sorin Paliga, Ivan Duridanov, et al.) may indicate that a number of these are in fact indigenous, from local Indo-European languages.

Though the substratum status of many Romanian words is not much disputed, their status as Dacian words is controversial, some more than others. There are no significant surviving written examples of the Dacian language, so it is difficult to verify in most cases whether a given Romanian word is actually from Dacian or not. Many of the pre-Roman lexical items of Romanian have Albanian parallels, and if they are in fact substratum words cognates with the Albanian ones, and not loanwords from Albanian, it indicates that the substrate language of Romanian may have been on the same Indo-European branch as Albanian.

The Bulgarian Thracologist Vladimir Georgiev developed the theory that the Romanian language has a "Daco-Moesian" language as its substrate, a hypothecised language that accordig to him had a number of features which distinguished it from the Thracian language spoken further south, across the Haemus range.

According to Romanian historian Ion I. Russu, there are supposedly over 160 Romanian words of Dacian origin, representing, together with derivates, 10% of the basic Romanian vocabulary.

Below is a list of Romanian words believed by early scholars to be of Dacian origin, which have also been attributed to other origins. The list does not include the Dacian plant names collected by Dioscorides and Pseudo-Apuleius, since these words were not retained in Romanian.

The Notes column contains information found in various dictionaries. "Not in current use" indicates words not found in dictionaries of contemporary Romanian.
The Sources column indicates the linguist(s) or the works who suggested including the words in the list:
"Sala": Marius Sala, De la latină la română (1998) [2]
"Hasdeu": Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae, 1894.
"Russu": Ion I. Russu, Limba traco-dacilor, Editura Științifică, 1967. The words that have been identified by I. I. Russu to have cognates in Albanian are marked with (Alb.).
"Vraciu": Ariton Vraciu, Limba daco-geților, Timișoara: Editura Facla, 1980.
"NODEX": Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române [The New Dictionary of the Romanian Language], Litera Internațional, 2002. In this dictionary substratum words are labeled cuvînt autohton "native word".
"Olteanu": Sorin Olteanu, "The TDM Palatal".
"Ciorănescu": Alexandru Ciorănescu, Diccionario etimológico rumano, Tenerife: Universidad de la Laguna, 1958–1966.
Sorin Paliga, Etymological Lexicon of the Indigenous (Thracian) Elements in Romanian, Bucharest: Editura Evenimentul, 2006.

Other languages

There are also some Romanian substratum words in languages other than Romanian, these examples having entered via Romanian (Vlach) dialects. An example is vatră (home or hearth) which is found in Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Carpathian highlander dialects of Polish and Ukrainian and other neighboring languages, though with modified meaning. Another one is Bryndza, a type of cheese made in Eastern Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic (Moravian Wallachia), Slovakia and Ukraine, the word being derived from the Romanian word for cheese (brânză).

Notes

References

Dominte, Constantin. "Le mot régional daco-roumain 'tirş': une hypothèse étymologique concernant le substrat du rumain, en rapport avec le grec ancien". In: Balkan Studies Vol 27, No 2 (1986): 253-261.
(in Romanian) Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. Columna lui Traian, 1876.
(in Romanian) Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae: Dicționarul limbei istorice și poporane a românilor, 3 vols. Bucharest: Socec şi Teclu, 1887–1895 (reprint ed. Grigore Brâncuș, Bucharest: Minerva, 1972–1976).
(in Romanian) Ion. I. Russu. Limba traco-dacilor, 2nd edn. Bucharest: Editura Științifică, 1967 (1st edn. Acad. Rep. pop. Romîne 1959; reprint Dacica 2009).
(in Romanian) Ion. I. Russu. Elemente autohtone în limba română: Substratul comun româno-albanez. Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR, 1970 (reprint Dacica 2013).
(in Romanian) Ion. I. Russu. Etnogeneza românilor. Bucharest: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1981.
(in Romanian) Ariton Vraciu. Limba daco-geților. Timișoara: Editura Facla, 1980.
(in Spanish) Alexandru Ciorănescu. Diccionario etimológico rumano. 3 vols. La Laguna, Tenerife: Biblioteca Filológica, Universidad de la Laguna, 1958–1966 (reprint: Madrid: Gredos, 1966).
- Romanian translation: Dicționar etimologic român. Translated by Tudora Șandru Mehedinți & Magdalena Popescu Marin. Bucharest: Saeculum, 2001 (in part available online at DEX online).
(in Romanian) George Pruteanu. "Limba traco-dacilor", transcript of a TV show broadcast March 25 and 26, 1996, on PRO TV; the transcript is followed by a "List of words considered by specialists as most probably belonging to the Dacian language".
(in Romanian) DEX online: a collection of Romanian dictionaries
Albanian <-> English Dictionary