About names

I will further discuss mainly the names of ethnic romanians 1700 - 1900. I haven't used diacritics. Of course, this presentation is only fugitive, intending to provide general guidelines on origins, spelling, etc. Feel free to ask your specific questions or send your comments at romaniaGEN@gmx.net !

Given Names
Family Names
Alternative Spellings

Given Names

Back in the 1700s people had only one given christian name. These names came from Biblical names out of the priest's influence and the common belief that the patronymic saint will protect you. Of course the dissemination of a certain name varied in each cultural area (Transylvania, Wallachia, Banat, etc). But in the 19th century some of the most popular given names were:

Diminutives/Derivatives of given names

Additionally, in Transylvania instead of the romanian names you will often find their Hungarian correspondents. Below is a table showing such translations

Family Names

The first law in Romania requiring people to bear both a first name and a surname was passed in 1895. However, people living in rural areas still changed names to their liking and the regulations were not effectively applied until the 1920s. At the time it was common rule that one should first list his given name then the family name. In the communist period 1947-1989 the order changed (probably out of the authorities tendency to neglect the invidual characteristics). Today, the opposite trend is developing.

In the past centuries people used nicknames to distinguish among individuals with the same given name. The nickname could easily have been lost from one generation to another (see below). The most common nickname was the one reffering to the name of the father (patronymical). The formula "X son of Y" or "X of Y" (Romanian: "X sin Y" or "X a lu Y" or "X lu Y") was very often used. Married women were generally designated by the formula "X of Y" where Y is the name of the husband (Romanian: "X lu Y" or "X a lu Y"). Here is a list of nicknames and their origins:

All these nicknames later became family names.

Changing surnames/family names: as long as the community accepted the new name, anyone could change his surname. Sometimes "surnames" didn't last more than one generation: Gheorghe son of Marin would then be named Gheorghe Marin. But his son, Ion, could call himself Ion son of Gheorghe thus changing the "surname" to Gheorghe. Teachers would often freely change students' surnames to make them sound more "educated" or peculiar. Even the officials wouldn't pay much attention to the exact spelling of names: I've seen many vital records in which the same person was mentioned with a surname then signed with a slightly different surname (The strangest transformation I've seen concerned Mr S. Calica which the registrar actually named as Mr Escalica!)

Suffixes for surnames:
-escu As this suffix was used in the past by the nobilty, later on (by the 1850s), with the rise of the middle classes, a real explosion of -escu names could be observed. A large part of these surnames came from patronymical and occupational nicknames (see above): Ionescu, Popescu, Marinescu, Mihailescu, Antonescu, Vasilescu, Voiculescu, Dumitrescu, Constantinescu, etc.
-eanu or -anu usually shows the origin of the person: Craioveanu (from Craiova), Brasoveanu (from Brasov), Dunareanu, Tataranu, Argesanu, Magureanu, etc
-ea: Chirea, Mitrea, Badea,
-u: In Romanian the articulation of the word is generally done by adding the -ul suffix to the word. Thus, to say "the locksmith" you would write "lacatusul" (lacatus = locksmith). However the in spoken language the final -l is not heard so here's how "John the Locksmith" would be written in Romanian: Ion Lacatusu. Almost all romanian names ending in -u fit into this expanation.

Below are some slightly changed suffixes used to make foreign names sound romanian:
-encu and -iuc for the ukrainean -enko, -iuk: Crafcencu, Romancencu, Varteniuc, Ictariuc
-opol and -ache for the greek opoleos and -akis: Stavropol, Carianopol, Stavrache, Petrache

Alternative Spellings

There were 2 main causes for changing the spelling of a surname:

1. The cyrillic - latin writing transition and other formal changes in the romanian alphabet
In Walachia and Moldova the cyrillic alphabet was used for writing up to 1860 (1863). Between 1830-1860 writing became quite chaotic with the development of a sort of transition alphabet, a cyrllic alphabet adapted to the romanian language phonetic. As this adaptation slowly derived from daily popular needs, there was no regulation over the ways of writing. Thus, everyone wrote in his own personal manner, blending characters from the cyrillic and latin alphabet, using strange abbreviations and punctuations... In 1860 (1863) latin alphabet was officially introduced, but still mentalities had to change.
For instance, in a classbook from 1865, Vîlsan Athan (abbreviation from Athanase) was listed after the letter B because V followed B in the Cyrillic alphabet! The same teacher (would correctly order his pupils in later classbooks!

Errors appeared when transliterating names. Common confusions were made between letters
B and V (instead of Voicu you will find Boicu, Varsan - Barsan),
K and C (Karagea-Caragea, Kiriak, Chiriac)
Formal changes in the romanian alphabet:
old ó became oa: Ión became Ioan,
old suffix -ú disappeared: Mihailú became Mihail, Ionú became Ion, Marinú became Marin, etc
old é became ea: Petrénu became Petreanu
old â became î: Pârvu became Pîrvu, etc

Romanian ortography is phonetic and thus changed in order to adapt to the romanian spoken language particularities (a latin language with slavic influences). Nowadays, it uses a latin alphabet, with 5 special characters to describe "slavic sounds": The slavic origin characters are:
     Â â *
     Ã ã
      Î î *
     S(with cedilla below)
     T (with cedilla below)
The * marked characters describe the same sound and are interchangeable.
Please note that in computer ortography, most romanians (me too) use these symbols plainly, without the diacritics because of the convenience.

2. Adapting a foreign name to the romanian spelling
Foreign names are usually misspelled in official records - they were recorded with romanian characters, following their pronounciation.

Have you encountered a different written spelling for these names? Share it to romaniaGEN@gmx.net !

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Updated on Mar 3 2001