Name of Romania
Timeline of where Romania came from
The name of Romania (România) comes from the Romanian Român, which is a derivative of the Latin adjective Romanus (Roman). Romanians are a people living in Eastern Europe speaking a Romance language.
Etymology of the ethnonym Romanian (român)
During the transition from Vulgar Latin to Romanian, there were some phonetical changes that modified romanus into român or rumân. The accusative form romanum was retained.
ending "-m" dropped (occurred in all Romance languages)
ending "-u" dropped (regular change; in Old Romanian was however still present)
"a" → "â" (regular change; vowels before nasal stops turned into "â"/"î")
"o" → "u" (regular change; however, in some regions of Romania, the variant with "o" was kept)
A reference to the name ''Romanian'' could be contained in the Nibelungenlied (written between 1180 and 1210), where a "Duke Ramunc of Walachia,/with seven hundred vassals, galloped up before her/like flying wild birds men saw them ride". It is argued that "Ramunc" could describe a symbolic figure, representing Romanians. In a document issued about the same period (1190 ?) by King Béla III of Hungary, a count Narad was mentioned as having fought the fury of the "Bulgarorum et Rume⟨n⟩orum" . Hungarian historian Imre Nagy believed Rumeorum to be a mistranscription of Rumenorum, which would be in reference to Romanians in the then recent uprising of the Bulgarians and Vlachs. However, the idea that Rumeorum refers to Romanians is disputed; Hungarian historian Imre Szentpétery, who co-edited the charter with Nagy, believed Rumeorum to be a mistranscription of Ruthenorum "Ruthenes", while Romanian historian Alexandru Madgearu believes this passage to be referring to harassment by the Byzantines (Romei) to a Hungarian army in the Theme of Bulgaria en route to the Holy Land in the Third Crusade.
In the Renaissance Romanians begin to be mentioned in journey and political reports, providing information about the name they give themselves, about their language, customs and the countries they inhabit.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Name of Romania” as timeline of where Romania came from. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q752525. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1180, 1210 and 1190.
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This entry incorporates text from “Name of Romania” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.