Amprente lingvistice multietnice în toponimia judeţului Tulcea
Multi-ethnic Linguistic Imprints in the Toponymy of Tulcea County

Summary/Abstract: The diversity of place names (toponyms) either carries the marks of the epochs in which they have been coined or reflects the physical, geographical and natural characteristics of a particular area. The oldest stratum in the toponymy of Tulcea County includes the place names of Thracian, Dacian and Celtic origin. The reminiscences from the Geto-Dacian language are scarce and mostly unreliable (glossaries, proper names, inscriptions). The following names: DUNA (from the Celtic word don, dun meaning “hill”, “fortress”, related to the Sanskrit word dhanu also meaning “hill” and from which the Romanian word dâmb meaning “knob”, “mound” has originated), DUNĂREA (the Danube), GHIUNALTUL/ GHINALTUL, GOLOVIŢA, NOVIODUNUM, PARDINA, RAZIM, TULCEA have been inherited from Geto-Dacians. The following stage in the history of Dobrouja, which has been inevitably closely linked to the history of Tulcea County as well, is its inclusion in the Roman province of Moesia Inferior (Lower Moesia) by the emperor Octavian Augustus in the second half of the 1st century B.C. After the division of the Roman Empire in 395, Dobruja becomes part of the Eastern Roman Empire, also named the Byzantine Empire later on. Hence the Roman (Latin) and Greek influences in place names such as: AD SALICES (“the fortress by the willows”), AEGYSSUS ARGAMUM/ORGAME, BEROE, DINOGETIA, (L) IBIDA, HALMYRIS, VICUS NOVUS (in Latin vicus “village” and novus “new”, ), TROESMIS. Nevertheless, the main core of the nomenclature in Tulcea County is represented by the Romanian place names. Here the Romanian population has created a specific toponymic system which has functioned and continued to develop for centuries and millenniums. Among those place names one has to mention: CÂRJELARI, CRIŞAN, DĂENI, FRECĂŢEI, GRINDU, GURA PORTIŢEI/ PORTIŢA, etc. Although the Romanian language has been patterned after the word stock and the grammar structure inherited from the Latin but still preserving several elements from the Thracian and Dacian strata, yet throughout its evolution, along the way, it borrowed words and phrases from other languages, mostly due to ethnic, linguistic and cultural contacts. These words and phrases have permeated the toponymy of Tulcea County in the very order the respective ethnic groups have entered this space and interfered with the local Romanian population. One of the oldest foreign toponymic strata encompasses the place names of Turkish origin, such as: AGIGHIOL (a combo from the Turkish words agi “bitter” and göl “lake”, which would therefore justify the translation “the bitter lake” situated nearby), ATMAGEA, BABADAG, BALABANCEA, CASIMCEA HAIDAR, RAHMAN, SARINASUF, [..], ZEBIL. The presence of the Pechenegs (Patzinaks) is recorded in place names such as: PECENEAGA, BUGEAC, CANLIA, whereas the presence of the Slavic peoples (that is Bulgarians, Cossaks, Russians, Lipovans, Ukrainians) is revealed in place names such as: BAIA, CERNA (de origine CIUCUROVA, GARVĂN, JIJILA, JUR

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