On Tuesday, January 27, 2004, at 04:43 AM, Joao wrote:
> What is the meaning of Romanian personal name MIRCEA? And RADU? And
> BESARAB?
>
> Joao SL
> Rio
Mircea is a reflex of the Slav. Mirko. Radu of the
Slav. Rado-(slav, -sav, -mir etc.)
Basarab is assumed to be a Cuman name (the Cuman
Turks AFAIK also belonging to the Oguz Turkish branch).
If so, then it is supposed to have been Bassaraba:
the suffixes -aba and -oba "father", as are ben &
ibn in Arabic and Persian names. The founder of the
South Romanian ruling dynasty was a Cuman known as
Tugomir or Tihomir or (Latinized in Hungarian diplomas
& chronicles as) Thocomerius Bassaraba.
The name Bessarabia - for East Moldavia, most of
which today bears the oficial name Republic of Moldova
- due to the fact that Mircea Basarab (or Bassaraba;
towards the end of the 14th and at the beg. of the 15th
c.) included into his realm a southern region of
Bessarabia (North of the Danube delta, i.e. N. of
Dobrudja). This name was then extended to the rest
of East Moldavia that was annected to Russia in 1812.
Mircea "cel Bãtrân" ("the Old") was Vlad(islav) Dracula
Junior's granpa.
(There were also some rather fantastic assumptions,
e.g. the interpretation: the title <ban> + <saraba>,
a wanna-be relic of some Dacian priestdom/nobility
group (cf. Bogdan P. Hasdeu, a Rum. historian &
linguist, in the 19th c.); according to this hypo-
thesis, even some Roman emperors were of "Saraba"
descent, such as Phillip Arabs // then: the ancient
"Bassareus" & "bassaricus" for Bacchus (in Greek
bassaára "fox fur"); or even a possible ethnonymic
relic of the Bessi who once lived in Moesia Superior,
were of Dacian stock, and who, according to some
researchers, were the real ancestors of today's
Albanians. ;-)).
George