Odp: Volcae+Wallachia-Vlach

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1167
Date: 2000-01-26

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Rex H. McTyeire
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 6:13 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Volcae+Wallachia-Vlach

I've been following this Wend Venedi Volcae discussion from a
respectable non-linguistic distance.  Its not impossible: but to sell
me on a Volcae>Wallachia link, I think you have first to go from
Volcae to Vlach (Voloch?), which will be the hard part.
    It is generally accepted that Wallachia (two "L's")is from Vlach, and
essentially means "Land of the Vlach". From there backwards there are three
main schools:
    1) Vlach is a form of  Slav _Voloch_ (for: foreigners) and is post Roman
(after 271 ad), and was applied to the Latinized Geto-Daci found here,
and actually referred to the broader nationality of composite Romanians
extending well across the Dneister and Danube rivers from the "Compromise
Principality" of Wallachia.  The foreigner appellation coming from two
perspectives: a) non-Slavic, and b) the Latinization elements were from
civil Italian and military colony contingents (The latter being retirement
benefits for legionnaires; at this point as apt to be Gauls, North Africans
and Levantines as Italian)
    2) Vlach is a pre-Roman "transhumance" Thracian tribe, and neighbor of
the Moesi, Getae, Daci, Costobocs and Karpidaci; simply gaining prominence
in usage for the Latinized Thracians of all stripes.
    3) All folks listed above were killed, and Slavs called the intrusive
replacements foreigners (Volochs).

After 2 years here wandering around lost, studying and observing, I reject
3) out of hand, favor 1); but concede some evidence may support a composite
of 1) and 2).
[Encoded and best viewed in Unicode (UTF-8).]
 
First, as for the spelling, both Walachia and Wallachia can be found in English-language sources. The British and American reference books I've just consulted give Walachia as the main variant and Wallachia as an alternative spelling. As there is no historical justification for the double L, I prefer the simpler version.
 
Second, the passage from *wolk- to Vlach/Voloch (ch = [x]) is simplicity itself.
 
The first people who generalised the Volcae's name to refer to any Italic or Celtic foreigners (especially those living in Gaul) were the Germani. Their pronunciation of the word was *walx- (with Gmc *x for lenited Celtic *k). This form is well attested in English: modern Wales < Old English We:alas/Wa:las 'native Britons' < *walxo:s ; the OE sg. wealh/walh meant 'serf' or 'alien' (a displaced or fugitive Briton). Note however that the Latin term nux gallica was translated as OE wealh-hnutu 'walnut' (German Walnuß), where wealh means 'Gallic'.
 
The related adjective *walx-isk-a- yields not only Modern English Welsh but also Old High German walhisc > German welsch 'Romance, Italian' (obsolete Welschland 'Italy').
 
The Slavs borrowed the Germanic words in question as *wolx-, *wolš-Isk- (the *a > *o replacement is normal, since either language had only one short vowel of this kind available; this is also why Celtic *o was replaced by Germanic *a). By the time the borrowing took place there were no Celts left in the part of Europe where the two branches interacted, so the words were applied to the inhabitants of various provinces of the Roman Empire (including Dacia with its Latinised inhabitants as well as Italy itself).
 
The further fates of *wolx- in Slavic depended on the development of *ol in various dialectal areas of the Slavic world:
  1. In East Slavic, *wolx- > volox-.
  2. In Lekhitic West Slavic, *wolx- > vlox- (hence Polish Włoch, włoski 'Italian (n., a.)' as opposed to Wołoch, wołoski 'Walachian (n., a.)', borrowed from Ruthenian dialects with an East Slavic development).
  3. In Czech, Slovak and South Slavic, *wolx- > vlax-.
The Hungarian word Olah results from an attempt to make Slavic Vlach pronounceable in a language which has no vl clusters.
 
Can you buy it now, Rex?
 
Megleno-Romanians refer to themselves as Vlaši (pl. of Vlach), but before the term Rumîn 'Romanian' became internationally known, Vološi or Vlaši was what all the Romance-speakers of the area were called by their Slavic neighbours. From the 13th/14th c. onwards Romanian shepherds referred to as Volochy or Vološi could be found wandering with their flocks all over the Carpathians, settling in areas where the dominant language was some variety of Hungarian, Ukrainian, Slovak or Polish. The dialect of the Polish Tatra highlanders has a number of "Walachian" (Romanian) borrowings, such as watra 'bonfire', and there are Romanian elements in the local placenames (e.g. Magura 'Hill').
 
Piotr