>The Latin form Thocomerius is more close to Toctomerie a cuman name
>[see http://www.itcnet.ro/history/archive/mi2000/current7/mi28.htm
>and http://www.itcnet.ro/history/archive/mi2000/current8/mi53.htm%5d.
I read Neagu Djuvara's texts on this topic a couple of years ago. (ND lived
over 40 years as an exile in Paris; the energetic historian (circa 80 y.
old) has had a Romanian TV talkshow on history for some years now).)
>then to Tugomir or Tihomir [slav name]. Don't you agree ?
It might have been so. Why not? And, if so ("Toctomer-"), then it's even
closer to Turkish-Tartar names such as Toktay and TokhtamI$.
>S o r i n
>
>P.S. In fact, we cannot be 100% certain that the guy was a cuman OR only a
>person having a cuman name.
What's certain, these Bassarabs' faith: Greek-Orthodox Christians.
They even resisted some tendencies of imposing Catholicism (about 80-100 y.
later on) in their principality. Whereas the bulk of the South Moldavian
Cuman sub-kaganate seems to have been Roman-Catholic. At least,
these had had their own Roman-Catholic bishopric "of Milcovia" some-
where in the region of today's city of Foc$ani (& the small river Milcov).
Until the 1230s, i.e. prior to the great Mongol invasion. The Hungarian
kings took care of this bishopric at the behest of the... Pope himself,
both in the 13th and 14th c. These Cumans dominated Moldavia, Muntenia
and Oltenia (the latter two a.k.a. Walachia or Ungrovlakhia) up to the 1230s.
Hence, in documents of the time, those territories (now South and East
of Romania plus Moldova Republic) were called "Cumania" (or better
Kara "black" Cumania, since the real, higher-ranking one, was farther in
the east). But as an ethno-political distinct group they vanished for
good because of the Mongols. Most of these Cumans fled to Hungary,
they didn't wait for the arrival of the Mongols in 1241.
However, in the aftermath "some" of the Cumans stayed for good
among Romanians, Bulgarians and esp. Hungarians. Others went back
to the EurAsian steppes after 1290, when "their" Hungarian king,
László died (see below). (In Hungary, the southern Tisza plain is called
Kiskunság "little Cumania", NW of the city of Szeged, where, the Hung.
kings chiefly colonized the Cumans who, under their khan Kuthen/Kotian,
had gotten... political asylum, much to the wrath of the Mongols, as
though they had been Commie regimes avant la lettre, not tolerating
any "Republikflucht". :o)) (BTW: In the same steppe-like plains, North of
"little Cumania", there is a region full of place names sarting with
Jász- [ja:s], i.e. where an Ossetian group was assimilated by the
Hungarian-Slavic population.)
So, no wonder that some Bassaraba warrior also showed up, as had
done other warriors of the "Altaic" kind all over Eastern Europe and
at the court of the Byzantine emperors for centuries (let's say: starting
with the Hunic warriors; all of them were appreciated as good mer-
cenaries; the Cumans were rather such people than builders of state
structures). Let's also keep in mind that up to 1290, the... overlord in
the region - aside from the regional Mongol boss (in South Ukraine; in the
1260s-70s khan Nogay who controlled territories up to Belgrad/Nándor-
fehérvár, Serbia) - was the Hungarian king, namely king "Kun" László,
i.e. Vladislav "the Cuman", whose mother was a Cuman princess. IIRC,
the Bulgarian lord George Terter (or Terteresh) was also a Cuman. Etc.
(There are various other person and place names in Romania evoking
the Petcheneg and Cuman period, such as Tâncabe$ti < approx. TInkaba,
Odobescu < Udoba; then those place names with the suffix -ui, such as
Vaslui, Covurlui, Calmatzui; then Ozun/Ozon, Cozia etc. Probably Borcea
(evoking both a local lower khan Bortz-Membrok and the Burtch clan or
Burtchevich and possible akin to an Old Hungarian figure among duke
Arpad's underlings: Bulcsu (Booltchoo). And of course Coman, Comanici,
Comanescu; Comana, Comane$ti. <Cioban> may also be older than the
contacts with the latest Turkish wave, the Ottoman one.)
George