Diocletian recites and recites. He recites the Ustasha schoolboy primer about “Vlachs”, not Serbs, being the settlers in Austria’s Military Frontier /Militaergrenze/ Vojna Krajina. How these Latin-Speakers became Serbianized Dio does not explain. (He recites.) Although Krajina Serbian and Croatian dialects have loads of Venetian words, I’d be interested to see the internal evidence from there that reflects Vlach language. After Dio finishes reciting, let’s wait for him to adduce the scholarly evidence. — Latin-speaking populations bear the same name, from Wales to Wallachia (Rumania) — the Romanized. In Greece the Vlakhi are ‘hillbillies , shepherds”. VLACH ~VLAH is a Slavic word, borrowing of a Germanic word, itself the borrowing of the name of a Romanized Celtic tribe (VOLCAE, singular VOLCA) then bordering the Germani to the south. The name was laid on other Romanized peoples in the course of Germanic migrations. In Britain the term covered both Romanized and un-Romanized Britons, the Welsh. —In Ireland Walsh and Welch are descendants of the Anglicized Normans who invaded Ireland from Wales. In Scotland there’s Wallace. Anglo-Saxon wealh meant ‘foreigner, slave, Briton (Welshman)’. In Austria and Switzerland it means ‘Italian’. In Serbia it includes Rumanians. Hungarians took it over from the Serbs: Olasz-orszag is ‘Vlach-land’ = Italy; Czech Vlachy, Polish Wlochy mean ‘Italy’. Serbian placenames near Sarajevo reflect Serbianized Roman populations (Vlasotince, Vlasenica, Romanija). —
Is my little scribble mere Serbian or Serbophile propaganda? Read the scoop on the following Austrian site.
More on VLACHs
“Serbs are really Vlachs.” – “Diocletian”, who is an intelligent person, has been educated by ignoramuses. I hope he hasn’t paid too dear a price for the stupidity of his teachers.
Austria’s law of the Wallachians STATUTA VALACHORUM of 1630 is purely a geographic term, referring loosely to a territory called Wallachia. Jews from there often bear the surname WALLACH, e.g. actors Eli Wallach and Mike WALLACE, ne’ WALLACH.
Just so, SLAVONIA in medieval Europe meant the SLAV LAND stretching from Villach in Austria to Belgrade, the Slovenes to the Serbs in today’s terms.
Nation states are creatures of the 19th century. Anybody posting on history ought to know that. If they don’t, they should step down from their soap box.
Ethnic names, national tags are labile.
“Indians” – I needn’t go into Columbus and all that. When thousands of US historians and history buffs of non-English descent say “we” in regard to the War of Independence, they would be laughed off the stage if a time machine could transport them back to 1776. Virginians and Londoners in the 1700s called Englishmen in the Virginia colony “Americans”. They called the English in Ireland “Irish”. The Scotch-Irish in the Appalachians were called “Irish’ in the early 19th century, then “Scotch-Irish, Hillbillies” and in PC “Appalachians”; in today’s reigning stupidity they’re re-baptized “Scots-Irish”; to which I prefer “Scots-Iris”. What we call the “Irish” were called “the Celtic Irish” in books of 1900. In the 6 Counties Protestants call themselves “British”, though to the rest of the world they are Irish. “Palestinians” in 1930 were Jews. All subjects of Istanbul were called “Turks”, as Muslims still are in Balkan villages — by Christian and Muslim alike — regardless of language or nation. In the first Byzantine records of “Turks” (Tourkoi) the tribes are actually Hungarians, “Hungarian” is from Turkish “Onu-gor / ten arrows (tribes)”. Slovaks called themselves “Hungarians” before Magyar nationalism erupted. “Illyrian” in Napoleonic times meant “Serbo-Croatian”. Now Sqipetari (Albanians) style themselves “Illyrian” and name their sons “Ilir”. The Caucasian place ALBANIA in the Caucasus that we find in Ptolemy’s atlas has nothing to do with the Adriatic coast now so-called. “Albanians” in Greek and Venetian records can be Greeks, Albanians, or Serbs.
Now –-
Vlachs and “Vlachs”
From the Serbophobic Noel Malcolm:
http://www.farsarotul.org/nl16_1.htm
www.camo.ch/povijestbih07.htm
“...there is little sense today in saying that the Bosnian Serbs are “really” Vlachs. Over the centuries many ordinary members of the Serbian Orthodox Church would have crossed the Drina into Bosnia or moved north from Hercegovina; a Serb merchant class also became important in Bosnian towns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not all the people who were sent to populate northern Bosnia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were Vlach, and since then there have been so many influxes and exoduses in Bosnian history that we cannot possibly calculate precise percentages for the “Vlach” ancestry of the Bosnian Serbs. Nor did the Vlachs contribute only to the Serb population; some (mainly in Croatia) became Catholics, and quite a few were Islamicized in Bosnia.”
From
Serbia and the Bulgarian Revival (1762-1872). James F. Clarke. American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 4, No. 3/4. (Dec., 1945), pp. 141-162.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1049-7544%28194512%294%3A3%2F4%3C141%3ASATBR%28%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
“Serbs and “Serbs”, Rumanians and Bulgarians.
“At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century Bulgarians in Rumania were officially known as ‘Sarbi.’”
Vlachs have been known for centuries for easily assimilating into their host cultures.
From Croatia: a competent view of “Vlach”.
from
http://croatiancrescent.blogspot.com/
“A little street runs along the base of the low hill on which the cathedral stands, called Vlaška ulica. The adjective “vlaška” comes from the noun “Vlah”, the name used for descendants of Roman colonists in the Balkans. As Romanians are the only Balkan people that speak a Roman language, the word Vlach became associated with Romanians, and especially with Romanians living outside of Romania.
In Croatian, however, the them Vlah was used for foreigners in general, and Italians in particular. Foreigners in Zagreb lived mostly at the foot of the Bishop’s palace, just outside of the walls. That is how Vlaška ulica got it’s name. It is a street for strangers.”