Etymology
The name Wallachia, generally not used by Romanians themselves (but present in some contexts as Valahia or Vlahia), is derived from the word "walha" used by Germanic peoples to describe Celts, and later romanized Celts and all Romance-speaking people. In northwest Europe this gave rise to Wales, Cornwall, Wallonia, among others, while in Southeast Europe it evolved into the ethnonym Valach, used to designate Germanic speakers' Romance-speaking neighbours, and subsequently taken over by Slavic-speakers to refer to Romanians, with variants such as Vlach, Blach, Bloc, Bloh, Boloh etc.—see also: Vlachs.
In the early Middle Ages, in Slavonic texts, the name of Zemli Ungro-Vlahiskoi (Земли Унгро-Влахискои or "Hungaro-Wallachian Land") was also used as a designation for its location - the land next to Hungary. The term, translated in Romanian as "Ungrovalahia", remained in use up to the modern era in a religious context, referring to the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan seat of Hungaro-Wallachia, in contrast to Thessalian Wallachia, or Great Wallachia in Macedonia, a medieval state, or Small Wallachia (Mala Vlaška) in Serbia. Official designations of the state were Muntenia (The Land of Mountains) and Țeara Rumânească (Terra Romana, or The Romanian Land).
For long periods after the 14th century, Wallachia was referred to as Vlaško (Влашко) by Bulgarian sources, Vlaška by Serbian sources and Walachei or Walachey by German-speaking (Transylvanian Saxon) sources. The traditional Hungarian name for Wallachia is "Havasalföld", or literally "Snowy Lowlands" (the older form is "Havaselve", which means "Land beyond the snowy mountains"). In Ottoman Turkish and Turkish, "Eflâk" (which also means "sky" or "skies"), افلاق, a word derived from "Vlach", is used.
Read more about this topic: Wallachia
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)