Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Megleno-Romanians
Summary
The Megleno-Romanians, also known as Meglenites (Miglinits), Moglenite Vlachs or simply Vlachs (Vlaș), are an Eastern Romance ethnic group, originally inhabiting seven villages in the Moglena region spanning the Pella and Kilkis regional units of Central Macedonia, Greece, and one village, Huma, across the border in North Macedonia. These people live in an area of approximately 300 km2 in size. Unlike the Aromanians, the other Romance-speaking population in the same historic region, the Megleno-Romanians are traditionally sedentary agriculturalists, and not traditionally transhumants. Sometimes, the Megleno-Romanians are referred as "Macedo-Romanians" together with the Aromanians.
They speak a Romance language most often called by linguists Megleno-Romanian or Meglenitic in English, and βλαχομογλενίτικα (vlakhomoglenítika) or simply μογλενίτικα (moglenítika) in Greek. The people themselves call their language vlahește, but the Megleno-Romanian diaspora in Romania also uses the term meglenoromână.
Unlike the other Balkan Romance populations, over time Megleno-Romanians have laid aside a name for themselves which originates in the Latin Romanus, and instead have adopted the term Vlasi or Vlashi, derived from "Vlachs", a general term by which, in the Middle Ages, non-Romance peoples designated Romance peoples and shepherds. The term Megleno-Romanians was given to them in the 19th century by the scholars who studied their language and customs, based on the region in which they live.
Their number is estimated between 5,213 (P. Atanasov, most recent estimate), and 20,000 (P. Papahagi, 1900). There is a larger Megleno-Romanian diaspora in Romania ( 1,500 people), a smaller one in Turkey ( 500 people) and an even smaller one in Serbia. Greece does not recognize national minorities, thus this approximately 4,000-strong community does not have any official recognition from Greece. Another 1,000 Megleno-Romanians live in North Macedonia. It is believed, however, that there are up to 20,000 people of Megleno-Romanian descent worldwide (including those assimilated into the basic populations of these countries).
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.