>There is still a huge difference between rumîn/român.
>The first one is still the name under which the serf's
>were known in Tara Romaneasca/Valahia/Muntenia in
>medieval times. Is the same thing as using "nigger"
>for "afro-americans".
Not quite, Sorine. "rumân" [ru-'mIn] really has
been the ethnonym, for which "român" is only one
modern variant. ("Mai, Rumâne!" is still in use in
regional and/or colloquial usage.) Actually, the
traditional spelling, in the Romanian cyrillic
alphabet, was "rumăn" [ru-'m&n], up to 1860;
possibly, the pronunciation was accordingly; e.g.
Tzara Rumănească. (Note that the Istrian-Romanians
have called themselves "rumări" [ru-'m&rj]) in
their dialect. (The ethnonym used by the other
major group, the Aromanians, isn't useful here,
since, in their dialect, they drop the vowel after
the "r" altogether: "Ar'mân/-i".)
"Serf" was only a *secondary* meaning - only in
the provinces of Oltenia (a.k.a. Little Wallachia
& Wallachia proper (that formed the principality
Tzara Romaneasca or Ungrovlahia) and only for a
certain period of time.
Besides: "Rumania/n" and "Roumania/n" are old-
fashioned or outdated spellings in English, but
they aren't wrong.
>S o r i n
George
NB: Rome's actual name was... Ruma (an Etruscan
toponym).