Vojvodina Slavania/Hungary/Serbia

Originally posted by Menumorut Bistrita was called Repedea (that in Romanian means "the fast one", like Bistrita means in Slavs), this is how it appears in a 13th century document.

Bistrita was called Repedea (that in Romanian means "the fast one", like Bistrita means in Slavs), this is how it appears in a 13th century document

I am curios about this attestation, too, because I do not know of it.

Yet we're not talking about modern names but about earliest attestations. And I do not know any Repedea in the 13th century. There's this interesting testimony from 17th century, belonging to Miron Costin, a Moldavian scholar, which wrote in a Polish chronicle of Wallachia and Moldavia about the mythical formation of the Moldavian principality and there he mentioned how voivode Dragoş (14th century) named a fast river Repede (from the Latin rapida, he detailed) but the river was later renamed into Bistriţa by the Ruthenians from Pokkutya brought by voivode Bogdan (Bogdan fought with Dragoş' descendents). However, this is not a reliable account, and certainly cannot be applied in the cases of the other Bistriţa rivers.

Edited by Chilbudios - 20-Jan-2008 at 16:48

For example, the name of V�lcea county is from a Slavic word meaning wolf.

 I doubt it. This word means even today  small valley (cf. lat. vallicula, but I guess more probably derived on the grounds of Romanian, "-cea" being a feminine diminutive suffix, see also "-cel") and this meaning makes more sense in the etymology of such a place at the Carpathian foothills.

Edited by Chilbudios - 21-Jan-2008 at 16:19

http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%C4%83_de_etimologii_ale_jude%C5%A3elor_Rom%C3%A2niei

Vibo, I am no Serbian speaker but I have little knowledge of words and grammar from various Slavic languages (Russian, Bulgarian) and this seems to be about the city called Kobila/Kovilja meaning the horse-city (?).

Edited by Chilbudios - 22-Jan-2008 at 10:40

Originally posted by Chilbudios Menumorut, though some etymologies are correct many etymologies are wrong/improbable (e.g. Argeş is rather Turkic than Dacian).

Not any such big river like Arges have lost its name from Antiquity, only the small rivers.

Thank you very much Anton, this helps out a lot

I know this is not really asked, but I decided to write up everything before.

Ancient History of Vojvodina

The first traces of intelligent man in the territory of modern-day Vojvodina go back all the way to the Paleolithic period, when homo sapiens sapiens went down the the Pannonian plain to hunt mammoths. The first permanent settlements arise in the late Stone Age (Neolithic) between 6000 and 3500 BC, when agriculturists and cattle-herders built the very first types of housing, banding together and keeping more and more often in one place. The most known dig site for this period in the history is Gomolava in Srem.

The first breakthrough was the use of metal ca. 3800 BC. The Metal Age lasted all the way to 2000 BC and left an important mark on the Primitive Community, which abandoned the matriarchate in favor of the patriarchate. Various cultures of the Copper Age emerged, not only ornaments, but new types of tools, as well as ceramics with the deep ornament. Gomolava is also the center of this period's foundings. From 1800 to 500 BC the Bronze Age lasts and 4 tiny primitive civilizations are born and die: Mokrin, Vinkovci, Vatin and Belegis.

The first organized people that arrives to the region are the Celts, bringing with them for the first time Latin culture from Western Europe. After the defeat of their "commune-state" in the first half of the 3rd century before Christ, most of the Celts leave, leaving behind only the Skordisces, a branch of the Celtic Boia tribe, which settle on the soil between Danube and Sava. The Iron Age, beginning in the 4th century BC, lasts all the way until the first half of the 1st century AD. It brought in high quality weapons & tools, more types of jewelry and the secret of Pottery. First needs to fortify settlements appear, an example of which was Zidovar at the southeast. Trading, Merchandise and Currency appear. At the east, the Dacians, a Thracian tribe, form their own primitive kingdom (a tribal alliance). The Illyrians also appear in the region (the Pannonians).


The Romans conquer the south in the second half of the 1st century AD and the east after the Dacian wars in 107 AD, however in 271 AD the Romans withdrew from Dacia after the Gothic invasion. The territory becomes a part of the Roman Province of Dacia. Romanization quickly catches most of the population and Roman culture and influence spreads further on beyond the border, in touch with the Jazyges, a nomadic Iranian tribe that populated the north, forever leaving an important mark in the region. The region between Sava and Dunav particularly flourished as the Romans built up the City of Syrmium, which gave the name to the entire region, into a mighty Metropolis. Syrmia was a very populated both civilian and military significant Roman territory; the Roman Army maintained a river fleet regularly to safeguard its frontier facing the unknown. The Romans built up towns, connected roads and other infrastructure, spread literacy and introduced vineyards into the center of the region, which quickly showed very potent for the task.



At the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th, Syrmia became the biggest City of the Praetorian Prefectorate of Illyricum and served as one of the Empire's secondary capitals. It had all Rome had, from an aqueduct and the theater across temples to Roman Gods and a forge to an Imperial palace and a Forum Romanum. It was the birthplace of 6 Roman Emperors, all romanized Illyrians: Gaius Messius Quintus Traianus Decius (r. 249-251), Lucius Domicius Aurelianus (r. 270-275), Marcus Aurelius Probus (r. 276-282), Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Herculius (r. 285-310), Flavius Iulius Constantius II (r. 337-361) and Flavius Gratianus Augustus (r. 367-383), as well as 2 usurpers to the throne: Igenius and Regalian. Another significant Roman town was Basian.




Overpopulation and search for new areas to hunt including other social elements initiated the Great Migration of Peoples that occurred between the 4th and 7th centuries. After 375 AD the Huns invade and push out the Goths, and led by Attila they settled between the rivers of Tisa and Danube, often raiding Roman soil. After Attila's death in 453 AD the Hun tribal alliance crumbles and the Gepids cross over Tisa, conquering Syrmia from Rome and establishing their own Barbarian kingdom. The Langobards form up an alliance with the Avars in 567 AD and destroy the Gepid civilization, and leaving to Italy to form their own Barbarian realm, the region entire falls into the hands of the Avar kaghanate. Along with the Avars and by the end of the 6th century, Slavs intense their migrations into the region.



Of the Slavic migrants that kept arriving through to the first half of the 7th century, there were Severians, Abodrites, Branicevans, and Serbs at the north, as well as the "White Serbs" in specific, who came with the defeat of the Avar invasions of the Balkans further down southwards. Kuber, the leader who brought the Bulgars, governed Syrmia as an Avar vassal until 680 AD when he left with his people. Grand Prince Buta-ul was the last Avar fief-lord of the northern parts. In 796 Frankish King Charlemagne destroys the Avar tribal alliance and his Empire reaches all the way to this place, the name "Frushka Gora" meaning in Serbo-Croat "Frankish Hill" remains to this day for the central Vojvodinian mountain chain. Under Khan Omurtag's expansions, the Bulgars conquer the eastern part of the region. In the early 9th century, the Timocans (a local Slavic tribe in Timok river's valley) fled Bulgarian aggressive expansion and settled in Syrmia, also becoming serbianized. As the Slavic principality of Pannonia (Continental Croatia) became independent from the Frankish Empire in the first half of the 9th century, it had forged a mini-Slavic alliance with the Timocan Serbs that didn't last for long.

In this very mutter period after the 827 Bulgarian intervention in Slavonia, the Bulgars conquer most of the region, even though the Byzantines have managed to (re)gain just Syrmia as its Pannonian province. In 896 the Magyars arrive to the Pannonian plain and start its systematic conquest. The Bulgars and Byzantines defended the Bulgarian Dukedom of Salan at the northwest, but the Magyars gave them a decisive defeat in the beginning of the next century at the plains of Alpar, ending his vassal-Voivodship. The Bulgarian Empire was henceforth on the defensive. Soon, the eastern Bulgar Dukedom of Glad also fell to the Magyars.



Edited by Yugoslav - 01-Feb-2008 at 21:59