Maybe because different people at different times might hold different sets of values compared to you or me?
Maybe because Slavic culture is known for having strong communality, egalitarian and tribalistic features?
Maybe because the ethnic composition of the local populace was very heterogeneous and the ruling elite intermarried with local and foreign peers?
Alright, and?
So, what's the significance?
So basically they lived in the region then came the Vlach leading to a mixed population and then they intermarried with the Vlachs, affecting their cultural, political, or social structure, finally ending up with Vlach voivodships ruled by a Vlach. That sounds an awful lot like assimilation.
You shoudlnt' assume your own opinions upon people living so far long ago.
The significance is the Slavic cultutres value strong charismatic leaders who uphold their [Slavic] ways of life and preffer to distribute power and resources toward common local good and shun individualistic actions.
Whoes assimilation? Besides it works both ways. btw have you ever heard of integration?
Alright, how does this tie in?
Okay, how does this random bit of info tie back to the main point?
Considering that the end result was Vlach voivodships, I think it's pretty obvious. And yes, it goes both ways, that's where the Slavic influence stems from.
That's for you to research and conteplate on. True knowledge, understanding, can only be gained by working it out for yourself... everything else are just opinions of others directing us one one way or the other regardless of the facts. Now unless you have something new to add, follow as others have said. Open a new thread where we discuss how etymology of topographic names, cultural traits and population estimates of late medieval Europe can be best represented ingame... or purely for academic reasons in order to get as close to the historic reality as possible....
No way =)) Are you for real? =)))))))) oh, erudite one, come on, we both know if you had the answer you would have said it.
*makes an argument*
*is shown that the argument he made actually supports assimilation*
*out of things to say, proceeds to say I should read more.*
Nice try, better luck next time.
Question 1.
Unfortunately, I am no toponymist. But to my understanding, the name of the city has a lot of grammatical rules in it that dictate what language has been the origin. here is the page from the source:
View attachment 1246258
here author outlines suffixes like -ești, -eni, and others to be Romanian in origin, with a meaning attached to them
Suffixes like -ov, -ovo, -in, -ivtsi, -ovtsi or in Romanian -ăuți (sorry if I spelt them incorrectly) are Slavic in origin
Also, cities that included the name rus in it presumed to have Slavic populations.
The majority of cities the author used, have changed their name throughout the timeframe (based on multiple documents).
Autor used those suffixes when the toponym goes from class 2 to class 3 as a marker of the language those toponyms are assigned to.
So we have a city that went from "village where the house of Pitik is" to "Peticeni" which was constructed using a Romanian suffix -eni between 1414 and 1528, a period of 114 years, which means this city has a Romanian name.
More examples here:
View attachment 1246279
This is how the distinction between Slavic origin <-> Romanian origin was made. No need for Romanian origin derived from Slavic distinction as I see it. Again I am no toponymist to determine what should be researched.
Other toponymic research, which I also use, marks roots containing -oro-, -olo-, to be East Slavic and -ra-, -la- to be South Slavic,
Also, a common feature of Slavic is G -> H
Question 2.
As I have outlined in the post you have responded to, let me simplify:
We have two maps. One is dated the 14th century. The second is dated by the 15th century.
As we can see, the number of villages has increased a lot.
Let's focus on Northern Bukovina. White dots mean Slavic, and black dots Romanian.
View attachment 1246270View attachment 1246271
A lot of villages in the 14th century had Slavic names.
A lot more villages in the 15th century had Slavic names. Like two times more.
All new villages between the 14th and 15th centuries have Slavic toponyms.
This means the population that founded those villages used Slavic rules to make the name of the village.
This means the population that founded those villages spoke Slavic
This means the population between the 14th and 15th centuries were Slavic
Not fully, but a sizeable majority, that solely dictated the forms of toponyms.
This challenges your claim that Romanians migrated here in the 10th century and started living in the cities, they did not know the names of.
If your claim is true, why have those Romanians continued to name the villages with Slavic words even in the 15th century?
Oh lord, those pure Vlachs that have never been warriors, never have touched anyone nor conquer.
1. Vlachs weren't warrior-like, but "However, Basarab's forces, composed largely
of Vlach warriors, ambushed and decisively defeated the Hungarian army at the
Battle of Posada (1330)."
2. Vlachs weren't warrior-like, but "The chronicle mentions the Bulgars and
the Vlachs in a broader
context of conflicts in the Balkans and southeastern Europe."
3. Vlachs weren't warrior-like, but "In 1019, the Pechenegs
and the warriors called "Blokumenn" in Scandinavian documents (likely the Bolokhoveni or Romanians) fought in the Battle of the Alta River (near the Dnieper River) on the side of Sviatopolk I of Kiev against Yaroslav the Wise."
4. Vlachs weren't warrior-like, but "In 1040, Casimir, Duke of Poland, formed an alliance with Yaroslav the Wise, Duke of Kiev, and received 1,000 foot soldiers to reclaim his lost territories in Poland. On this occasion,
an army composed of Ruthenians, Prussians, Dacians, and
Getae (possibly Romanians) is mentioned.
5. Vlachs weren't warrior-like, but "In 1068,
the Vlachs/Romanians and the Pechenegs led by Osul
took part in a raiding campaign in Transylvania and Hungary, which ended with the Battle of Chiraleș in Transylvania, where they were defeated. The events are recorded in a Russian chronicle."
6. Vlachs weren't warrior-like, but "In 1070,
the Vlachs/Romanians, along with the Pechenegs and Ruthenians,
were involved in an expedition by King Bolesław of Krakow. The campaign is commented on by the Polish chronicler Długosz."
All of that is your quotes! You just contradict all your previous statements.
I feel like you have already passed the nationalism stage.
No culture/race is a culture of peaceful angels, and please don't make claims and judgements based on it.
Any people could have conquered any other people. Or diplomatically ruled.
Being warrior-like does not matter at all!
Vlach are not unique and exceptional to not do exactly the same things, that happened with other cultures.
"The Vlachs were not stronger than the Slavs so why would they rule over them?" - speculation. Anything could have happened. We simply have no data.
"With the Rurik example, the same thing, they conquered them."
According to Russian sources Rurik was invited to reign.
For question 1:
The suffix "-in" is common in Romanian place names, but also "-na", which I see from the page you provided they were listed as slavic.
That's already 2 potential Romanian names listed as exclusively Slavic from what you've shown me, and you said the list is bigger so there could be more.
The page you provided from the source says that 73,8% of the names of villages from Moldova in the 14-15th centuries are of Romanian origin. This is about 75% of all of Moldavia.
If the Slavic words <-> Slavic loanwords in Romanian difference would have been made, that number would have been even higher.
It seems that the author assumes by default
"everything latin = Romanian ; everything non-latin = non-Romanian", which is not the case.
There's a difference between Latin <-> Slavic toponyms and Romanian <-> Slavic toponyms.
There are for example Romanian place name endings with "-in", "-na", "-ra", "-va", "-za", "-ca", "-te", "-ia", "-zi", "-da", etc. These suffixes are as Romanian as "-ești" and "-eni". Since the Romanians has slavic influences from the 5th-8th centuries
(depends on the author), they had centuries of using those words. The "-ăuți" is the Romanian adaoptation of "-ivtsi" and is of Slavic in origin but a Romanian derived from slavic loanwords at the end of the day.
Assuming that everything which a slavic suffix must mean slavic, when you have a population with strong slavic influence in the same area is speculation. As per the examples with "-in" and "-na".
For question 2:
Those Romanians continued to name the villages with Slavic words even in the 15th century because if the correlation from the hydronyms study is anything to go by - in regions with a higher amount of Slavic hydronyms (thus of Slavs) there was also a higher amount of Romanian hydronyms derived from slavic loanwords (thus of Romanians using slavic).
We've already established in question 1 that this study seems to assume
"everything Latin = Romanian; everything non-latin = non-Romanian", so everything of slavic origin is white on the map, regardless whether it is slavic word or slavic loanwords being used by Romanians. But, when such a distinction was made in the hydronymic study, something interesting was found:
The hydronymic pattern everywhere is Latin origin > Slavic origin = Other origin, except in regions with significant slavic population.
There the pattern is Slavic origin > Other origin > Latin origin, with the slavic origin being more double the size of the other 2 combined.
This is a correlation mentioned by the study, not something I personally made.
Meaning, living next to the Slavs would lead to more slavic loanwords being used by Romanians.
So, to summarize, yes I acknowledge the liabilities the hydronyms have, but it seems that the toponyms are not lacking in liabilities themselves. With "-in", "-na", possibly more from what you said, that are interpretable as they also exist in Romanian but were listed as slavic by the author for some reason, being exactly in that Slavic words or Slavic loanwords in Romanian? line, and the tendecy of Romanians to use more more slavic loanwords in areas where they are living next to the Slavs (this makes natural sense in fact, without the study telling it), the difference itself is huge, Slavic loanwords dominance was higher than the Latin dominance in areas without slavs. It's that worth it?
The presence of Slavic toponyms (place names) in the 14th and 15th centuries does suggest that Slavic-speaking populations played a significant role in the settlement and naming of villages during that time. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that all the people in those areas were Slavic, as not all Slavic-speaking, were Slavic, or that no other groups, such as Romanians, lived there. The Romanian language itself contains a significant number of Slavic loanwords, as a result of these centuries of interaction. This could indicate that even if Romanians were the majority in some areas, the naming conventions might have absorbed Slavic influences over time, without implying that the entire population was Slavic.
This is something brought up by this paper:
Demografie şi politică la est de Carpaţi în secolul al XIV-lea: Aspecte istoriografice, Ion Eremia
Which specifically mentions the study you use by Polevoi.
In fact, the author Ion Eremia wrote this paper specifically because another Russian historian, S.Suleak, used Polevoi's work without question.
Here it speaks of how even another Soviet historian Litavrin pointed out that using toponyms (place names) to determine ethnicity is incorrect because the Vlachs used slavic names for places.
And further down the line how N.Demcenaco researching the Romanians in Ukraine found out that they live in many villages of slavic names.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is wrong with Polevoi's work:
Polevoi oscilates between using estimations of 800-1000 villages in his tables. Meaning sometimes he uses 15.000 more people, other times he uses 15.000 less people. Given he estimates each village to have 15 houses of 5 people each. The number of villages as well as how many people lived in what village are purely his own estimations, they are not statistical data or compillation of all archeological findings or of all villages mentioned by documents, yet he gives very concrete numbers based on these personal estimations.
That peasants from Galicia migrated to Bukovina starting the 14th century and this is indicated even by Soviet historians as well. And they founded new villages there. As such, the Russian element that he Polevoi is using in his estimations was not there before.
That for some unknown reason, even with the toponyms problematic for the reasons previously mentioned, Polevoi concluded 596 Romanian villages & 322 Slavic villages, yet 41.720 Romanians and 31.020 Slavs. Which is not consistent with his 1 village = 15 houses, 1 house = 5 people estimation. So about 75 people/village.
He justified it saying that the number of people in Russian villages in Bukovina was higher, but he has no basis for this.
Here is just proof of bad math from Polevoi's part.
He never has an exact number of his calculation of the people in a village. Sometimes he even has 94,6 inhabitants which is not possible. Which shows that his estimations were random. It's very strange how he made those calculations without having clear statistical data, as the author doesn't say.
With math it shows that even Slavic villages outside of Bukovina did not follow his: 1 village = 15 houses, 1 house = 5 people formula. But were higher too, for unknown reasons. Although he said only in Bukovina were higher.
Combine the convenient math with the toponyms problems that were even acknowledged by another Russian historian and:
"The falsehood of L.L.Polevoi's conclusions, even though he used the mathematical method in his study, is more than visible".
For the Vlach warriors:
Those were the exceptions rather than the rule. It's the reason they are rare in the first place.
It's the same reason they didn't have states of their own in the 10th-11th centuries with other cultures had. Or why Gardizi described them as "more numerous than the Hungarians, but weaker". So we do not have any statements about the Slavic <-> Vlach power ratio, but we do have about Hungarian <-> Vlach power ratio. Most sources that describe the Vlachs at the time describe them as shepherds.
To this, one may say, "yes, but they overwhelmed with numbers", which is exactly what happened according to Romanian histography.
This is not some fringe theory, the one speaking is Ioan-Aurel Pop, the head of the Romanian Academy.
For example: THE VLACHS : THE LATIN SPEAKING POPULATION OF EASTERN EUROPE Demetrius Dvoichenko-Markov, the author is not Romanian:
next page:
He speaks on how the Vlachs assimilated the Slavs north of the Danube because they were more numerous, and the Slavs assimilated the Vlachs south of the Danube because they were more numerous. Same thing Ioan-Aurel Pop was saying.
Or this: ROMANITATEA BALCANICA ŞI CONTACTELE EI CU SLAVII, Dr. TOMASZ KLIMKOWSKI
(Not sure why a Polish historian would write in Romanian)
Slavic influences over Romania, as a consequence of the assimilation of the Slavs by the Vlachs, can be dated as far as the 5th century.
So while there are exceptions of warriors, it's clear that they did not came in as warriors.
Rurik was invited to reign after the Rus managed to raid and loot Slavic lands, proving they have power, so they were inviting someone that can protect them, because of their power.
But I understand this Moldova discussion has already went for too long, so yeah, I'll stop here. I just wanted to point out the issues in the study as a last thing.
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