Medieval Vlachs and Vlachias or South-East Romanity as seen by Others: 1. Vlach the Nomen Barbaricum of Romance Speakers in the Middle Ages

This study will try to offer an overview of the exonym Vlach and of the equivalent toponym Vlachia through the Eastern and Western Middle Ages (i.e. principally by comparing the first attestations of both terms in medieval sources). Moving from the assumption that Vlach became the most widespread name of the medieval romanity in Europe, at least from the 8-9th c. to the 15th, the author tries to retrace the evolution of the exonym with respect to both phonetic and semantic aspect. Although, in the Middle Ages, the use of the exonym Vlach seems to be specular to that of the endonym Roman, no direct evidence exist of a Balkanic or Danubian heir of this last (e.g. Rum. Rumân or Alb. Rëmër) before the beginning of the 16th c. Moreover the ethnic use of Vlach began to decline already in the Middle Ages, while social and confessional uses (meaning shepherd, peasant, serf, and later orthodox or muslim/“Turkish”) began gradually to prevail.