Who were the Vlach / Wallachian people?

Since the middle ages (400CE-1400CE) various peoples of Europe have referred to speakers of the Romanian language as being “Vlach” or “Wallachian” people.

Romanian Shepherd By Théodore Valerio – Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) www.cnap.fr, Public Domain, Link

For example, the people in our village of Liteni, as cultural Romanians, would have been referred to as “Vlach” or “Wallachian” people by other Europeans.

The terms Vlach or Wallachian is a label for peoples who spoke eastern romance languages¹ which in modern times refers only to the various regional dialects of Romanian. Cultural Romanians didn’t refer to themselves this way but they would have been aware that ‘others’ called them this.

Wallachian people were spread across the borders of many countries in historic Europe, not just one. Because there wasn’t one single country to geographically define these people it makes sense that there was a term for them as a ‘people’. It was a way of people being able to place them on the globe and draw upon some stereotypes to make conversation flow.²

Referring to speakers of the Romanian language with these terms was not necessarily insulting but we know some used them to evoke racist stereotypes.

Romance Languages

The term eastern romance languages is not to be confused with the more general term of romance languages which encompasses languages with Vulgar Latin roots such as Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Catalan and others.^3,4

Romanian Dialects

Did you know that the Romanian language has dialects?⁵

• Modern Romanian Language
  • Northern dialects
    • Moldavian dialect
    • Banat dialect
    • Transylvanian varieties
      • Maramureș dialect
      • Crișana dialect
  • Southern dialects
    • Wallachian dialect

References

1. Eastern Romance languages, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Romance_languages, Viewed Jan 6, 2026 ↩︎
2. Vlachs, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs, Viewed Jan 6, 2026 ↩︎
3. Romance languages, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages, Viewed Jan 6, 2026 ↩︎
4. Vulgar Latin, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin, Viewed Jan 6, 2026 ↩︎
5. Romanian Dialects, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_dialects, Viewed Jan 14, 2026 ↩︎