HUNGARIAN TERMS

IN OLD ROMANIAN JURIDICAL DOCUMENTS

Liliana Agache11
liliana.agache@yahoo.fr

Abstract: The influence of Hungarian on Romanian became manifest starting from the 10th century and in
the course of time became stronger, being felt even nowadays in various Romanian dialects. Our interest
focuses on the lexemes specialized for certain fields of activity, belonging to social life and rural
civilization, terms that have been attested since the 16th century and which are presently either no longer
used, or used, while maintaining their semantic value or modifying it. The Hungarian forms studied here
represent an integral part of the folk language. They are encountered all over the area where Dacian-
Romanian is spoken, not in isolated regions, due to the numerous exchanges that occurred between the
Romanian population in Transylvania and in the old principalities of Moldavia and Walachia.

Keywords: Romanian-Hungarian linguistic interference, cultivated borrowings, Dacian-Roman.

We cannot speak about a direct and proper Hungarian influence on Romanian in

ancient times, but only after the Hungarians’ arrival in the Pannonian Plain, when the
first Hungarian infiltrations occurred in Transylvania, starting with the 10th and 11th
centuries, thus favoring, through bilingualism, the penetration of a considerable number
of Hungarian words into Romanian.
The first borrowings from Hungarian seem to have reached Romanian through
Slavonic (Puşcariu, 1940: 311). However, as Transylvania was occupied by the
Hungarians, the Slavic super layer was affected significantly by the Hungarian influence.
Even though the relationships between the Romanians and the two peoples witnessed
consistent differences in either of the two cases and the development stages encountered
by the Slavs and the Hungarians were dissimilar, the Hungarian influence left an
indelible mark on the Romanian population in Transylvania, owing to the uninterrupted
presence of the Hungarians and their living together with the Romanians.
The influence of Hungarian on Romanian starts after the dialectal separation of
common Romanian and is reflected exclusively on the vocabulary of Dacian-Romanian.
The forms being discussed here are encountered all over the Dacian-Romanian field,

11
Institute of Linguistics “Iorgu Iordan-Alexandru Rosetti”, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania.

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although initially they were found only in the dialect of the Transylvanians. The
dissemination of the old and general stock of Hungarian elements throughout the area
where Dacian-Romanian was used can be explained by the movements of the population
between Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia. The Hungarian elements introduced in
the Romanian language spoken in Transylvania form an integral part of the folk
language. The functional values of these borrowings are different. Some of them are
quite widespread, acquiring a general character, but most of the borrowings are only
known at the level of regional dialects.
The first attestations of the Romanian-Hungarian linguistic interference date
from the 14th century. As far as documents are concerned, the earliest attested terms are:
hotar, meşter, nemeş, vamă, oraş, dijmă, etc. in the 15th century Slavonic-Romanian
documents and in the 16th century Romanian texts, but the elementary attestations of
Hungarian origin multiply in the following centuries. The lexis displaying a Hungarian
influence covers most of the semantic spheres, while an increased number of the
recorded terms designate concepts related to the human body and psyche: belşug,
beteşig, biciului, to human relationships: făgădaş, giurui, hălăstui, meşterşug, mirui,
murgui, obligălui, ponoslui, pretendălui, to social life (law, administration): birşag,
călăuz, comişioru, conjiştorium, conşcribălui, dişcreŃie, ecjecutor, ecjecuŃie, fişcuş,
fuglu, funduş, haraciu, harmiŃed, hasnă, hatalm, iliş, impoşiŃiu, incfijiŃiş, marhă,
marşrută, paşuş, pârcălab, pârgar, pârgariu, probălui, procator (pocrătol),
reghiştrom.
We notice the prevalence of administrative, political, economic terms that the
Hungarian occupation and the feudal organization (with a Westernizing character) of
the territory was able to introduce: aprod, bir, birău, ban (‘governer’), hotar, meşter,
pârgar, pârcălab, vamă. Apart from these terms, we notice certain words from the
terminology of agricultural property: dijmă, imaş, megieş (megieş), locaş, răzeş, sălaş.
Each of these terms is attested in a different era and has a diverse circulation. A part of
the terms we analyzed are present in the Slavonic-Romanian and Romanian documents
from the 15th century, up to the 16th and 17th centuries (L. Tamás, Etymologisches
Wörterbuch, et alii).
The concepts connected to social life, namely the ‘noble’ functions and titles, bear
the names of certain terms of Hungarian origin: nemeș, chinez (= cneaz), besides which
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there exist words like grof, herţeg, șoltuz, which obviously originate from the German
feudal period (German Herzog, Graf, Scholteisze), as well as pârgar, meșter (German
Bürger, Meister).
The economic relationships on both sides of the Carpathians could be the reason
for the use in Romanian of another series of terms: aldămaș, ban (“coin”), cheltui,
chezaș, majă (“measure of weight”), marfă (“marhă”), tar ( “measure of weight” and
“task, burden”), uric, vamă. These terms are attested by L. Tamás too (Etym.
Wörterbuch), some from the 15th century (Slavonic-Romanian documents), others from
the 16th and 17th centuries (Romanian texts).
The military terminology also exhibits interesting features. This field records a
series of important terms: cătană, haiduc (originally, “Hungarian infantryman”), pușcă,
pușcaș, hotnog “căpitan de oaste” (“army captain”), husar, viteaz. It should
nevertheless be noted that in these cases, with the exception of hotnog, these terms also
exist in the surrounding Slavic languages.
The Hungarian elements introduced in the Romanian language used in
Transylvania form an integral part of the folk language. Hungarian gave the Romanian
vocabulary a fairly large number of terms whose character is entirely restricted to folk
language, recorded especially in documents written before 1640. These terms entered
the Romanian vocabulary directly and are used especially to denominate human
relationships, sentiments, social relationships: adămană, alcam, alce, aldămaș, aldui,
alnic, bănat, băsău, bâlci, bântui, belșug, biciului, bir, biu, buigui, celui, chelciug, chin,
ciurdă, dijmă, feredeu, giurui, hasnă, hălădui, megieș, neam, nemeș, otălmăzui, socaci,
sucui, tar, tău, târnaţ, ţintirim.
We may speak about the presence of the Hungarian cultivated element after 1640.
Among the cultivated borrowings taken from Hungarian, the most frequent are those
that generally designate social ranks: aprod, dorobanţ, ecjecutor, general, hotnog,
husar, pârcălab, pârgar, terms that depict the administration and life at the princely
court: administrălui, apelălui, ghiuluș, ujură, or religious terms: mișă, although their
presence in literary documents is scarce.
The productivity of terms with a Hungarian origin is not very rich in this era,
when we generally notice a tendency to form noun, adjective, and verbal derivatives by
means of suffixation. A group of terms have different senses in accordance with their
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situation in contemporary language, which may be explained by semantic
evolution. Certain borrowings have developed in Romanian senses that do not exist in
Hungarian. Thus, adomány (“gift”) can be found in old language under the form
ademană, where the verb ademeni was derived from. Marfă is the Hungarian marha
(“cattle”) which can also be found under the form mărhaie; sobă means “room”, like the
Hungarian zyoba, in certain parts of Ardeal, where the Hungarian influence is stronger.
Otherwise, soba is the name of the heating device, like in the Balkan languages.
For words connected to trade (vamă, cheltui) or industry (meșter), which display
an inherent tendency to be transmissible or are related to sundry institutions where the
Hungarian model was followed (aprod, uric, dijmă) and which were learnt by people
due to the contacts they had with the authorities, their wide circulation among Dacian-
Romanians has nothing unusual about it. Thus, beteag only has the sense “sick”
[person], like the Hungarian word beteg, in Ardeal.
Cătană had the meaning of “soldier” in Ardeal and Bucovina, like the Hungarian
word katona, but it also had the sense “Austrian-Hungarian soldier”.

Conclusions

The Hungarian influence on Romanian is essentially different from other

influences due to a series of peculiarities, all of these originating in the historical
circumstance of the two large groups of communities of the two peoples’ living together
– in certain conditions.
The contact between two entities – more or less different from each other –
stimulates the differentiation and self-identification on the basis of the differences that
were noticed, traced, and strengthened.
There exist various peculiarities that generate differences and incompatibilities
which may characterize and distinguish the two languages. In contrast with the other
levels of the language, the phonetic level is as representative as can be.
For a very large number of borrowings, the formal aspect reproduces that of the
original term. In several situations the Romanian language system has determined the
creation of variants originating in the analogy or application of treatments exhibiting a
folk or regional character.

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