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Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning "citizen of Rome".[15] The first known use of the appellation was attested in 16th-century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia.[16][17][18][19] Neacșu's Letter from 1521, the oldest surviving document written in Romanian. The oldest surviving document written in Romanian, a 1521 letter known as the "Letter of Neacșu from Câmpulung",[20] is also notable for including the first documented occurrence of the country's name: Wallachia is mentioned as Țeara Rumânească ("The Romanian Land", țeara from the Latin terra, "land"; current spelling: Țara Românească). Two spelling forms: român and rumân were used interchangeably [note 1] until sociolinguistic developments in the late 17th century led to semantic differentiation of the two forms: rumân came to mean "bondsman", while român retained the original ethnolinguistic meaning.[21] After the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân gradually fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român.[note 2] Tudor Vladimirescu, a revolutionary leader of the early 19th century, used the term Rumânia to refer exclusively to the principality of Wallachia."[22] The use of the name Romania to refer to the common homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—is first documented in the early 19th century.[note 3] The name has been officially in use since 11 December 1861.[23] English-language sources still used the terms Rumania or Roumania, derived from the French spelling Roumanie and/or the Greek Ρουμανία, as recently as World War II,[24] but the name has since been replaced with the official spelling Romania.[25] |
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