Place names ending with -esţi
I have not found any references to Romanian place names ending with -esţi, but anyone travelling Romania will have noticed the great number of places with this ending. The map below gives the distribution of -esţi as a percentage of villages and towns. The distribution shows peaks in the following regions:
- Moldavia centred on the central Moldavian plateaux
- Wallachian sub-Carpathians: Oltenia and north Muntenia centred on Argeş
- The Moţi lands of Bihor and the Apuseni mountains
- Maramures
Interestingly these areas:
- Had Vlach voivodes when the first documentary evidence is available from around 13th century
- Were least affected by the invasions of migrating peoples
- Have strong Romanian folklore
- The Moldavia-Wallachia part coincides with the distribution of the fota, the oldest women's costume skirt that the Romanians claim to be depicted on the Trajian column
Throughout the Balkans there are place names with similar endings to -esţi. These are found in eastern Serbia, northern Albania and western Macedonia. It has been suggested that this area between historic Serbia (which was smaller than modern Serbia) and Bulgaria remained populated by Latin speakers, and possibly Albanian speakers well after the migration of Slavs into the Balkans. This would explain:
- The divide of Bulgarian and Serbian Slavic language
- The continuation of Latin origin place names
- The words common between the Romanian and Albania
Place names ending with -auţi and -ovo
The place names in northern Moldavia give an indication of the extent of the early Slavic population by the -ăuţi ending to Romanian place names. See the history of Moldavia page. Similarly the -ovo ending common in Bulgaria extends in Banat in Romania.
References
