THE BALKANS AND MACEDONIA
The study of onomastics, primarily toponyms and anthroponyms, is of invaluable value for understanding the material and spiritual culture of each people, since the essence is hidden in the name (nomen is omen). While anthroponomastics deals with the study of personal names and surnames, as well as ethnonyms, to that extent toponyms deal with the study of topographic names: horonyms, oronyms, hydronyms, macronyms and micronyms. Since toponyms are "living" monuments and guardians of the material and spiritual culture of individual civilizations or peoples, it is justified to briefly refer here only to the etymological and semantic meaning of the toponyms of the southwestern Balkans, given that they are passed down from generation to generation.
The latest macrotoponymic research in the southwestern Peloponnese by George MacDonald, 1 indicates that despite the rigorous national operation for Hellenization of Slavic toponyms in Greece, they still exist and persist. Thus, for example, it was established that ten villages have the name “Ovors”, where the Slavic name “Obor” – stable is hidden. Then, “Potoki” – stream, also in another 10 villages. Then there are toponyms with names of Slavic origin, such as: Glina – clay, 8 times; “Viros” – whirlpool, 10 times; “Korita” – trough, 24 times; “Granica” – border, 15 times, and others that semantically correspond to the Slavic corpus. Mr. Litoksou, D. cites the research in the doctoral dissertation of the author Oikonomou, K., 2 which covers 3504 microtoponyms in 42 villages in northwestern Greece.
Among them, 444 or 12,7% were of Slovenian origin. Litoksou concludes that although the national operation for the Hellenization of toponyms in Greece first began on April 3, 1833, with the decree of the Greek government "on territorial division", it successively continued uninterrupted until September 1994 when the Ministry of Interior ordered the change of the "barbaric" name "Neon Ljosion" to "Ilion", the Slavic names persisted.
1 Georgacas, D & McDonal, W.: Place Names of Southwest Peloponnesus/Peloponnesiaka, volume, VI, Athenai, 1968
2 Oikonomou, K., Toponymiko tis periohis Zagoriu, Ioannina , 1991.
Greek authors do not elaborate on macrotoponyms. If we look at their geographical map, most Slavic toponyms are found along the western and central part of the Pindus massif. Their etymology and semantics are given by Mpampionioti. 3 "Preveza" is the name of a district and capital in the Ambracian Gulf, which means transportation between two capes, i.e. through a strait. "Karpenisi" is the name of a district and capital in the Pindus Gorges: Greek, unknown origin, Slavic "karpa" - rock. "Granitsa" - border, "Topoliana" - poplar, in the same district, etc. "Grevena" - name for a district and capital, Slavic - ridge. "Kozani" is the name for a district and capital, Slavic - goat.
From this it can be seen that the tradition of the name of Perdiccas' capital Aega (Aiga) remained among the people, which in Slavic translation means goat, and is located on the opposite bank of the Bistrica River (Haliakmon), at a distance of several kilometers. "Livadela" - name of the capital of the Boeotia district - Greek origin unknown, while the Slavic meaning is - meadow, because it is located in a marshy area. "Làmia" - name of the capital of the Phthiotis district - Greek origin unknown, while in Slavic it means - dragon, dragon. "Völos" - name of the capital of Magnesia - the Greek origin of the word is unknown, while the Slavic is vo-oxen. "Zagorà" is the name of a neighboring city on the eastern slopes of Mount Peleus, in Slavic it means - behind the mountain. "Mètsovo" - a city in the Ioannina district, Slavic - bear. Village "Zitsa" – Žiča, "Serbiana" – Srbijanska, etc. "Konica" – a town in the district of the same name, Slavic – konj(an)ica, etc.
For the city of "Vodenà" - water (Mpampinioti states that it is a medieval name and that the name Edessa is from the 19th century. From all the above, it can be concluded that the Scythian-Proto-Slavic Illyrian tribes left an indelible mark along the Pindus mountain range, not only in the micro, but also in the macro-toponyms of today's Greece. In these areas, "A-Romanians" - "Cintsari", "Vlachs", "Latin-speaking Greeks", "Vlach-speaking Greeks", remnants of the Illyrian tribes of the ancient Scythians still live today. However, "Nomen est Omen".
1 Mpampiniotis, G., Leksiko tis Neas Ellinikis Glossas , 1998.
Ethnogenesis of the Western Balkan Cintsari Epiri – Privo descendants
There are numerous hypotheses about the ethnogenesis of the Balkan Tsints. Popoviħ, D. 4 states that "The Tsints received this name from the Serbs." Furthermore, for numerous reasons (numerically very insignificant, on an ethnic border, without a significant military and political past) without a literary language and a special culture, and hated for some of their own characteristics, they called themselves, and other peoples, by different names. Although they lived on the ethnic border of the South Slavs, the Greeks and the Albanians, the Greeks still had a decisive influence on their fate. In encyclopedias 5 they are identified as a population of Romanian origin. Their capital is Moskopolje, on the western slopes of Pindus and the Gramos plateau (2520 m) in the 18th century. Moskopolje had 50.000 inhabitants and was an important trade center of the Balkan countries. It was frequently ravaged by neighboring Albanian tribes, especially in 1788, and especially in 1821 when it was burned by the Turkish pasha Ali Pasha of Janinski.
4 Popoviħ, D., O cintsarima , Contributions to the question of the creation of our civil society, Prometheus, Belgrade, 1998, 16.
5 Prosveta, 1969, Belgrade, 2, 889, etc.
However, despite the devastation of the Tsintsa settlements by Ali-Pasha Yaninski – Tepelenlij and the exodus of the population, the toponymy of Epirus continues to be the reality and destiny of this part of Greece. The national operation of Hellenization of the toponyms, which, according to Oikonomou 6 in the area of Zagorje in Epirus, out of the total number of 3.504 microtoponyms, 505 or 14,4% belong to the Vlach (Aromanian) language corpus, did not contribute much to this. This multilingual presence on the soil of Epirus (Greek, Slavic, Tsintsa) unconsciously gives the Greek language a special appeal, specific warmth, beauty and lexical diversity, and does not violate its norm in any way.
6 Oikonomou K., Toponymiko tis periohis Zagoriu, Ioannina, p. 754, 1991.
The Latin-speaking population of Greece is most often identified as Kutsovlasi or Aromanians. Regarding their language, Mpampinioti 7 points out that “it belongs to the vernacular Latin language (demodes latinicae), from which the Indo-European group also derives the Italian, French, Spanish, etc. languages. The language of the Tsintsari on the soil of Greece is a Latin dialect and contains archaic elements of Latin and significant archaic elements of Ancient Greek, which have not been preserved in the modern Greek language.” The logical question arises – if toponyms persistently, archetypically remember historical events, how did Latin-Finnish names come about? From the research so far, we have determined that the first, oldest linguistic substrate on the soil of the Balkans is the Paleobalkan glossology – Pannonia. The next layer is the Scythian-Illyrian glossology. The third layer is Latin. How was that Latin substrate introduced?
7 Mpampiriotis, G., Synoptiki istoria tis Ellinikis glossas, r. 37, Athena, 1986.
The Epirotes belonged to the Scythian-Illyrian tribes of the Molossians. One of the kings of Epirus was Tarippus, and then, during the ancient Macedonian state of Philip II, his son Alcetes had two sons: Aribus and Neoptolemus. Aribus's son was Pyrrhus, whose character and deeds were described in detail by Plutarch. 8
8 Plutarch, Vitae parallelae (prev. Parallel biographies ), II, 39, Zagreb, 1988.
The Molossian king Pyrrhus (319-272 BC) was married to Antigone. In Epirus, Pyrrhus returned 8.000 infantry and 500 cavalry in 275 BC. About 100 years later, in 168 BC, the Romans defeated the Macedonians and their allies in the Battle of Pydna. The terms of the peace not only deprived Macedonia of its independence, but also severely punished those who helped the Macedonian king Perseus or even sympathized with him. Macedonia was divided into four city districts. Each district was declared independent, had its own money and was not allowed to enter into relations with other Macedonian districts, which turned Macedonia into a vassal state and was obliged to pay taxes to Rome.
The winner of the Roman wars in the Balkans, the consul Aemilius Paullus Lucius, punished Perseus' allies very severely. The cities of Epirus were destroyed, and 150.000 people, women and children, from their population were taken into slavery. Plutarch 9 writes about this: "... he set out with the army to Epirus, because he had a decision of the senate that the soldiers who fought with him against Perseus should compensate themselves by plundering the cities there. Since he wanted to attack them all at the same time and unexpectedly, he ordered ten of the most important people from each city to be summoned and instructed them on a certain day to bring any silver and gold they had in their houses and temples.
With the representatives of each city, he sent a guard of a centurion of soldiers, who pretended to seek and take gold. But when the appointed day came, they all, rushing at the same hour, attacked and plundered the cities, so that in one hour one hundred and fifty thousand people were turned into slaves, and seventy cities were devastated . From such an extermination and complete destruction, each soldier received no more than eleven drachmas, the whole world was horrified at such an end of the war: the dismemberment of an entire nation brought so small a gain and little benefit to each individual soldier.
9 Plutarch, Vitae parallelae (prev. Parallel biographies ), I, 352, 29, Zagreb, 1988.
With the conquest of Macedonia, the Romans became masters of the Balkans. The newly conquered area had great strategic importance for them. From there, the Romans often started their expeditions to the northeast. For this purpose, they built the Via Egnatia road from Durres to Thessaloniki, which, through the Via Appia in Italy, connected the West with the East, Rome with Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor. Thessaloniki, due to its position, became an important land, maritime, administrative, military, economic and cultural center. To this Balkan transversal was added the already existing north-south vertical, which connected the Danube basins: Sirmium, Singidunum, Naisus, Skupi, Stobi-Thessaloniki-Beroia, Thebes, Athens.
We were unable to find historical data on the repatriation of the Epirote Aromanians. However, with the occupation of the Balkans, the deep gap between the official slogan of freedom and the practical goals of Roman diplomacy was clearly manifested. The ideological formation of the official Roman foreign policy program was undoubtedly influenced by Stoic philosophy, which was in fashion in the 2nd century. Freedom (libertas), humanity (humanitas), justice (iustitia), loyalty (fides) and finally "divide and rule" (divide et impera) were the basic principles by which Roman diplomacy was guided. This shows that Roman policy was selfish and took into account only its own interests and therefore favored only Romanophile parties in certain regions of the Balkans, which led to friction/tensions and tension.
In Greece, the ethnonym Graikos and Ellenas was transformed into Römaios , while the Epirotes received the ethnonym Aromäni , meaning they are not Romans, not Greeks, nor Romans.
Among the Eprian Aromanians there are other synonyms, such as Kutsovlasi, Karaguni, Karakachani, Tsintsari, Burzovlasi, etc. We could not solve the etymological meaning of the ethnonym 'Tsintsar'. The suffix "ar" in the Sanskrit word "Arua" has the meaning of a title - gentleman. In the ancient Greek language, the word "Areiön" means the best, nobleman, first, bravest. In our language it denotes a certain function, for example zab-ar, kuv-ar, chuv-ar and the like. Or, Tsints-ar means 'five centuries of return after Roman slavery'
Etymologically, the ethnonym 'Vlach' is of unknown origin. It is believed to be of Germanic origin, from the word "Valah", Latin "Volcae" – Oualkai. This ethnonym originally referred to the Latinized Celts who lived in the Roman Empire, and later, with the Germanic conquests, their ethnonym was retained. Another assumption is that it refers to the Arabic word "fellah" – farmer, a name that the Romans took during the occupation of Egypt.
Mpampinioti 10 believes that the Vlach language in Greece is not of Romance origin from an ethnological point of view, but that its affinity with Romanian is a consequence of the fact that Aromanian and Romanian have a common linguistic root in the so-called Eastern or Balkan Latin language. While the language of the Romanians was influenced by the Getae and the Dacians, the language of the Aromanian-Cintsari preserved the Slavic base, the Ancient Greek superstructure and the Latin superstructure.
10 Mpampiniotis, G., Leksiko tis Neas Ellinikis Glossas , p. 377, 1998.
The language of the Aromanians
The tri-linguistic composition of the Cincian language is also confirmed by Mikhail Boyagi in his “Grammar of the Cincian Language”. 11 Boyagi was a professor of Greek in Vienna and the father of the first scientifically-based grammar of the Cincians, with explanations in Greek and German. The name of the book is “Gramatike Römanike, etoi Makedonovlahika”. 12
11 Mihail Boiagi, Gramatika cincarskog jezika – Gramatikä Aromänä "Lunjina" – Belgrade, 1993, translated by Vasilije Barba and Pribislav Marinkoviħ
12 Michael Boiagi, Grammatika Römantike, etoi Makedonovlahika , en Bienne, 1813.
The language, Limba Armäneäskä of Bojadžija, is an archaic language spoken by his parents in Moskopolje, around 1750, and from the point of view of the modern Tsincar language, its grammar is little used. However, from its lexicon, one can determine, above all, a wealth of Latin words, Slavic and Ancient Greek, adapted to the spirit and tradition of the Tsincar language corpus. As an example, we cite the Slavic words in the ceremonial song of the Tsincari: “Vow of the Parents – Dimändarea pärinteascä: “plocile”–plate, “el ân vatara –fire, hearth, etc.
The great general and king of Epirus, Pyrrhus (red as fire), led 28.500 soldiers in his adventurous military campaign south into Italy. He fought from 280-275 BC. He returned to Epirus with 8.500 soldiers. There were 13.000 dead and 7.000 missing fighters, who were probably prisoners. If we add to this number 150.000 citizens of Epirus who became slaves of the Romans and were taken to Italy by the occupier Aemilius Paulus Lycius, in 168 BC, it can be concluded that the total number of Epirus population living in Italy was about 157.000 inhabitants. They, in the midst of the Romans as servants, also learned their language, which they adapted to their linguistic tradition.
With the construction of the Via Egnatia in the Balkans, the Romans settled Aromanians in dominant control points, such as gorges. For example: the village of Klisura in the Kostur district at 1.250 m, the village of Neveska, Lerin district at 1.364 m and the village of Psoderi in the same district at 1.400 m, the villages of Gorno and Dolno Shel in the Njeguški district at 1.000 m., the villages of Gjavato Kozani, Nijepole in the Bitola district and the city of Kruševo at more than 1.000 m above sea level, etc. However, the first settlement of newcomers, Aromanians from Italy, was between the Gramos mountain and Ostrovica, in the area called Colonia , where Moskopol , their largest and richest city in the Balkans, was founded .
The Roman Empire ruled the Balkans from 168 BC until the arrival of the Turks and the fall of Constantinople in the Byzantine period, in 1.453, i.e. for a total of 1621 years, with Latin as its official language. However, during the reign of Emperor Justinian I (527-565), Alexander's 'koine' language was declared the official state language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
From this it follows that bilingualism, i.e. Latin and the Alexandrine-Macedonian 'koine' language, were the main and dominant languages in the Balkans for about 1000 years. All this contributed to the formation of the Cincian Aromanian language and to the preservation of their toponymy in Epirus, their autochthonous ancestral homeland despite the exodus.
During the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, all its inhabitants became rajas, and the epithet "romios" referred exclusively to the inhabitants of the Western Byzantine Roman Empire who were Hellenic-speaking. 13
13 Mpampiniotis, G., Leksiko tis Neas Ellinikis Glossas , p. 1577, 1998.
During the 18th century, the peoples of the Balkans experienced an awakening of national consciousness and a revival, various uprisings, movements related to the "Eastern Question" and internal anarchy in the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Janissaries overthrew them and installed sultans in Constantinople, while individual pashas became independent of the central government. Among them were the Vidin Pasha Pasvanoglou and the Ioannina Pasha Ali-Pasha Tepelenli. Ali Pasha-Ioannina managed to seize Epirus, southern Albania, western Macedonia, Thessaly, the western part of mainland Greece, and even the Peloponnese in 1788. Taking advantage of the antagonisms of the great powers and with the help of France and England, he planned to create his own independent state in the western part of the Balkans.
In his efforts, he encountered two autonomous regions of the Cyntsari-Epiroti: Himara (Heimarras) and Soylion (Sylia, Soylion,). In the year 1798 he managed to capture Himara and all the villages on the banks of Acrokeraunia. The fighting against the Soylions was difficult and long-lasting. Soylion was a union of mountain villages in Epirus, and the toponomomastics means 'sharp peak of a mountain'.
Ali-Pasha Tepelenli fought against the Suliots in 1790-1791, 1792, 1800, but only in 1803 did he manage to defeat them after the heroic resistance of the defenders. After that, an unprecedented persecution of the Tsintsars occurred when in 1821 there was the burning of Moskoplje and a large diaspora of the Epirus population throughout the Balkans and Europe.
To be continued
Written by: ACADEMICIAN A. SHKOKLYEV-DONCHO AND SLAVE KATIN
