Greater Romania - Name

Name

The original Romanian term, "România Mare", or Great Romania, carried irredentist overtones, used in the sense of re-integration of the territories that shared Romanian language and culture. The term became more common after the Treaty of Versailles, when the attachment of Transylvania to the Kingdom of Romania occurred as a result of the Treaty of Trianon; thus the Kingdom of Romania under King Ferdinand I came to include all provinces with an ethnic Romanian majority, by comparison with the previous Romanian Old Kingdom under King Carol I, which did not include the provinces of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina. An alternative name for "România Mare", coined at the same time, was in the Romanian language "România Întregită" (roughly translated in English as "Romania Made Whole," or "Entire Romania"). "România Mare" was seen (and is also now seen by the great majority of the Romanian people, both at home and abroad) as the 'true', whole Romanian state, or, as Tom Gallagher states, the "Holy Grail of Romanian nationalism".

When used in a political context it has an irredentist connotation, mainly concerning the territories that were ruled by Romania in the interwar, that are now part of Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova or Bulgaria.