Vlachs

Vlach (English: /ˈvlɑːx/ or /ˈvlæk/), also Wallachian (and many other variants^[1]), is a term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate speakers of Eastern Romance languages living in Southeast Europe—south of the Danube (the Balkan peninsula) and north of the Danube.^[2]

Although it has also been used to name present-day Romanians, the term "Vlach" today refers primarily to speakers of the Eastern Romance languages who live south of the Danube, in Albania, Bulgaria, northern Greece, North Macedonia and eastern Serbia. These people include the ethnic groups of the Aromanians, the Megleno-Romanians and, in Serbia, the Timok Romanians.^[3] The term also became a synonym in the Balkans for the social category of shepherds.^[4] and was also used for non-Romance-speaking peoples, in recent times in the western Balkans derogatively.^[5] The term is also used to refer to the ethnographic group of Moravian Vlachs who speak a Slavic language but originate from Romanians, as well as for Morlachs and Istro-Romanians.^[6]

^ Ioan-Aurel Pop. "On the Significance of Certain Names: Romanian/Wallachian and Romania/Wallachia" (PDF). Retrieved 18 June 2018.
^ "Valah". Dicționare ale limbii române. dexonline.ro. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
^ Vlach at the Encyclopædia Britannica
^ Sugar, Peter F. (1996). Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804. University of Washington Press. p. 39. ISBN 0-295-96033-7.
^ Tanner 2004, p. 203.
^ Ivan Mužić (2011). Hrvatska kronika u Ljetopisu pop Dukljanina (PDF). Split: Muzej hrvatski arheoloških spomenika. p. 66 (Crni Latini), 260 (qui illo tempore Romani vocabantur, modo vero Moroulachi, hoc est Nigri Latini vocantur.). In some Croatian and Latin redactions of the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, from 16th century.