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Revision as of 17:13, 18 December 2004
Vlachs (also called Wlachs, Wallachs, Olahs) are the Romanized population in Central and Eastern Europe, including Romanians, Aromanians, Istro-Romanians and Megleno-Romanians, but since the creation of the Romanian state, this term was mostly used for the Vlachs living south of the Danube river.
They are descendants of the Roman colonists or of the Romanized Dacian, Thracian and Illyrian local population (see Origin of Romanians for more about the dispute about the origin).
The origin of the name is Germanic: the same origin led to the words "Welsh" and "Walloons" in other parts of Europe. Slavic peoples initially used the name Vlachs when referring to Romanic peoples in general. Later on, the meaning got narrower or just different. For example Italy in Polish is called Włochy. In English, Wallachia is the name given to a part of their original territory. The term was originally an exonym, as the Vlachs used various words derived from romanus (români, rumâni, rumâri, aromâni, arumâni etc).
Romanians (also known as Daco-Romanians, speaking Romanian language) are living in
and as a minority in
- Ukraine - 500,000; in Southern Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
- Serbia and Montenegro - 75,000 (30,000 in Vojvodina)
- Hungary - 70,000 (0.7% of the total population)
- Slovakia - 9,000
Aromanians (speaking Macedoromanian language) are living as a minority in:
- Northern Greece mainly in the Pindus Mountains
- Note: the Greek government does not recognise any ethnic divisions, so there are no exact statistics. See Demographics of Greece.
- Republic of Macedonia - 9,695 (0.5% of the total population)
- Albania - between 10,000 and 40,000
- Romania - about 50,000; mostly in Dobruja
- Bulgaria
Megleno-Romanians (speaking Megleno-Romanian language) are living in Northern Greece.
Istro-Romanians (speaking Istro-Romanian language) are living in Croatia, with a population of 1,200.
Religion
The religion of the Vlachs is predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but there are some regions where they are Catholics and Protestants (in Transylvania) and a few are even Muslims (in some regions of Greece and in the European part of Turkey).
See also:
- List of Romanians - Vlachs of Romanian ethnicity
- List of Vlachs - Vlachs of Aromanian ethnicity
- History of Romania - Vlachs from north of Danube
- History of Vlachs - Vlachs from south of Danube
- Morlachs