All Things Wallach
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare
What meaning can we
find in our surname?
First, it should be clearly understood that our English/American spelling of Wallach is a phonetic transliteration of a name that can only be correctly spelled using a Cyrillic Romanian or Russian alphabet, with letters that do not exist in English. How the name is spelled in English is ultimately an arbitrary accident of how the name sounds in English, which can vary by the listener. We can see this fact in Hyman Wallach's documentary trail. On the December, 1906 Passenger manifest for the steamship Marion that brought him to the US, his name was written by an immigration inspector as Chaim Holoch. On his 0ctober,1911 Declaration of Intent, his name is written as "Himan Valoch". On the October 1918 Petition for Naturalization we get two spellings: "Chaim Volach known as Hyman Wallach", which makes this the document where he apparently settles on our current spelling.
Another example of how our name is transliterated is found on the JewishGen website, where they have taken the Bessarabia Duma Voters List for 1906 and 1907 and put it into a searchable database. This is interesting for two reasons. First, they provide an extensive explanation of exactly how they transliterate the names. Second, at least two of our relatives show up on the list - Hyman's father David Hirsch Wallach and David's brother Jacob Wallach. In the database the names are transliterated as Duvid-Gersh Volokh, and Yankel Volokh.
This is all to make the point that the English spellings of Wallach, Wallich, Wollock, Wallack, Wallick, Wolach, Voloch, Valoch, Vlach, Holoch, or even Block, Bloch or Walsh and probably countless other variants, are all equally valid English transliterations of the exact same Romanian surname (although some, like Wallace and Walsh may be dervied form the same Roman root, but actually refer to Welsh surnames).
When we try to discern our origins further back than Beryl or Sham Volokh, we have some options to explore. We can look at the political history of the region where our great-grandparents were born (Bessarabia),or of the neighboring country that was our namesake (Wallachia). We can look at the religious history of Judaism in that part of the world. We can look at the language that shares our name (Vlach) and is still spoken today in a few isolated regions of the Balkans. Finally, we can look at the linguistic roots of the name itself.
So let us start with the word that is our name. The word is used to refer to a people, to a land, to a language, and to a sheep.
We know that variants of the name/word are used in a number of countries that were once part of the Roman Empire, that the word appears to have a Roman/Latin origin, and it has a meaning of: the others - the strangers - the foreigners - the ones that are not like us.
To help you draw your own conclusions, a short collection of excerpts and links exploring our linguistic roots ....
"All origins become mysterious if we search far enough into the past. And almost all peoples, when we look at their earliest origins, turn out to have come from somewhere else....
Only the remnants of a Latin-speaking population survived in parts of the central and west-central Balkans; when it re-emerges into the historical record in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find its members leading a semi-nomadic life as shepherds, horse-breeders and travelling muleteers. These were the Vlachs, who can still be seen tending their flocks in the mountains of northern Greece, Macedonia and Albania today.The name 'Vlach' was a word used by the Slavs for those they encountered who spoke a strange, usually Latinate, language; the Vlachs' own name for themselves is 'Aromanians' (Aromani). As this name suggests, the Vlachs are closely linked to the Romanians: their two languages (which, with a little practice, are mutually intelligible) diverged only in the ninth or tenth century. While Romanian historians have tried to argue that the Romanian-speakers have always lived in the territory of Romania (originating, it is claimed, from Romanized Dacian tribes and/or Roman legionaries), there is compelling evidence to show that the Romanian-speakers were originally part of the same population as the Vlachs, whose language and way of life were developed somewhere to the south of the Danube. Only in the twelfth century did the early Romanian-speakers move northwards into Romanian territory."
- Origins: Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs -Chapter 2 in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo, a short history (Macmilan, London, 1998, p. 22-40)
"Vlach is itself an interesting word. It seems to be a derivative from the same Germanic word cognate to welsch in German and Welsh in English, both meaning Roman, whether the Romans be Latin-speaking or Celtic-speaking. Vlach itself is Slavic (taking that form in Czech) and could mean Italian or Romanian, though the same word, with appropriate case endings, turns up in mediaeval Latin (Blachi) and Greek (Blakhoi, pronounced Vlakhi), only applied to the Romance speakers of the Balkans. It also occurs in Polish as Wloch, in Hungarian as Olasz, in Russian as Volokh, in Yiddish as Walach, and in various other forms even in those same languages (cf. "Vlach," A Dictionary of Surnames, Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges [Oxford University Press, 1988], p. 558). Vlach also significantly turns up in the name of the first Romanian principality: Wallachia (or sometimes "Walachia"). Thus, we can imagine the word being left behind in the Balkan Sprachbund by the German tribes during their stay in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
For many centuries Vlach was a spoken and not a written language. When it was committed to writing, the Cyrillic alphabet was used, in line with the Orthodox faith of the people. Later, a national consciousness arose in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, where the language came to be called "Romanian."
- The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History - Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D
"Welsh - O.E. Wilisc, Wylisc (W.Saxon), Welisc, Wælisc (Anglian and Kentish), from Wealh, Walh "Celt, Briton, Welshman, non-Germanic foreigner;" in Tolkien's definition, "common Gmc. name for a man of what we should call Celtic speech," but also applied to speakers of Latin, hence O.H.G. Walh, Walah "Celt, Roman, Gaulish," and O.N. Valir "Gauls, Frenchmen" (Dan. vælsk "Italian, French, southern"); from P.Gmc. *Walkhiskaz, from a Celtic name represented by L. Volcæ "ancient Celtic tribe in southern Gaul." The word survives in Wales, Cornwall, Walloon, walnut, and in surnames Walsh and Wallace. Borrowed in O.C.S. as vlachu, and applied to Romanians, hence Walachia. Welsh was used disparagingly of inferior or substitute things, hence Welsh rabbit (1725), also Welsh rarebit (1785) "
- ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY
"Sir William Wallace of Braveheart fame, the country of Wales, and a walnut are all closely related, although not in the way one might think. The Germanic wealh meant "foreign", and both Wales and Cornwall are so-named because they were full of Kelts who didn't speak English... The family names Welch, Walsh, and Wallace (Norman French Waleis) are from this "no speak English" sense. The word was by no means restricted to the English vs the Kelts. The Walloons (Waalsch) don't speak good Dutch, the Swiss canton of Valais obstinately speaks French instead of German, and residents of the province of Wallachia speak Rumanian (Vlach) instead of German. Welscher is German for "Italian", and it even got borrowed by the Slavs — the Polish word for Italy is Wlochy."
- Words Words Words - John Dierdorf
"VLACHS - ...The name is thus of foreign origin, the native Vlachs continuing to this day to call themselves 'Rumani', 'Romeni' or even 'Romani' and it is from the native pronunciation of the Roman name that we have the equivalent expression Rouman, a word which must by no means be confined to that part of the Vlach race inhabiting the present kingdom of Roumania...
This Vlach or Rouman race constitutes a distinct division of the Latin family of peoples, widely disseminated throughout eastern Europe, both north and south of the Danube. North of the Danube the Roumans inhabit, besides Walachia and Moldavia, Bessarabia and the adjoining South-Russian districts, a large part of Transylvania and the Hungarian Banat, and extend sporadically from the Bug to the Adriatic...The centre of gravity of the Vlach or Rouman race is at the present unquestionably north of the Danube, and corresponds roughly to the limits of Trajan's Dacian province. From this circumstance the popular idea has arisen that the race itself represents the descendants of the Romanized population of Trajan's Dacia, which was assumed to have maintained an unbroken existence in Walachia, Transylvania., beneath the dominion of a succession of invaders."
- THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA Chicago, 1895
"The Etymology of the Denomination of ‘Wallachia’ in the Ramusian Vision
A detail utilised by Paul Ramusio and that could not be detected in John Baptist's Navigationi et Viaggi is the one referring to the etymology of the name of 'Wallachia", namely its descent from the name of a supposed Roman governor of the region, that had been Flaccus. Although there has not been written any study exclusively dedicated to the appearance and to the evolution of this tradition, it may be asserted that there was a Humanist invention, in the general tendency to find out legendary founders for every population, on the model of the Rome's foundation by Eneas. Beside Francus, Hispanus, or Britannicus, the Humanist historiography made its choice in the Wallachian case for this Flaccus or Flachus. This option was different than the other ones by the fact that, while the others 'founders' were considered as descending from the Trojans, Flaccus had been a Roman dignitary. There is also an evidence that the Humanists discovered that the respective population had Roman origins...
At least in the period when Paul Ramusio lived, the Wallachian population's descent from that hypothetical general Flaccus was an idea shared by some Humanists, among whom we mention Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the Saxon George Reycherstorffer (around 1495 - after 1554), and later Mark Bandini (?-1650) . With the exception of Adolf Armbruster, the Romanian historiography rather confined itself to enumerate the authors who had denied this legend than to follow its evolution.
Conclusions
We consider that the chronicle written by Paul Ramusio on the second half of the 16th century brought new determinations regarding this state. The erudition, and also the desire to do not leave any uncovered ground determined Paul Ramusio to enter into the essence of this new reality. He followed the geography, the structures, and especially the past of the three components that caused the Crusader knights' immobilisation and explicit the end of the Crusade: the Wallachian, the Bulgarian, and the Cuman ones. He raised questions and offered solutions, especially respecting the building of the State of the Assenides' or of its leader's image, the placement of Johannitza Kaloyan's Wallachia, the name given to the inhabitants from the North of the Danube, or the placement of different populations that the Crusaders got into contact with. In a region such as the Balkan Peninsula, whose heterogeneity and complexity were and still are keywords, there is a real adventure to attempt the deciphering of the different peoples that live in. "
- A Humanist Vision regarding the Fourth Crusade and the State of the Assenides. The Chronicle of Paul Ramusio (Paulus Rhamnusius) Chapter 14 by Şerban Marin
First, it should be clearly understood that our English/American spelling of Wallach is a phonetic transliteration of a name that can only be correctly spelled using a Cyrillic Romanian or Russian alphabet, with letters that do not exist in English. How the name is spelled in English is ultimately an arbitrary accident of how the name sounds in English, which can vary by the listener. We can see this fact in Hyman Wallach's documentary trail. On the December, 1906 Passenger manifest for the steamship Marion that brought him to the US, his name was written by an immigration inspector as Chaim Holoch. On his 0ctober,1911 Declaration of Intent, his name is written as "Himan Valoch". On the October 1918 Petition for Naturalization we get two spellings: "Chaim Volach known as Hyman Wallach", which makes this the document where he apparently settles on our current spelling.
Another example of how our name is transliterated is found on the JewishGen website, where they have taken the Bessarabia Duma Voters List for 1906 and 1907 and put it into a searchable database. This is interesting for two reasons. First, they provide an extensive explanation of exactly how they transliterate the names. Second, at least two of our relatives show up on the list - Hyman's father David Hirsch Wallach and David's brother Jacob Wallach. In the database the names are transliterated as Duvid-Gersh Volokh, and Yankel Volokh.
This is all to make the point that the English spellings of Wallach, Wallich, Wollock, Wallack, Wallick, Wolach, Voloch, Valoch, Vlach, Holoch, or even Block, Bloch or Walsh and probably countless other variants, are all equally valid English transliterations of the exact same Romanian surname (although some, like Wallace and Walsh may be dervied form the same Roman root, but actually refer to Welsh surnames).
When we try to discern our origins further back than Beryl or Sham Volokh, we have some options to explore. We can look at the political history of the region where our great-grandparents were born (Bessarabia),or of the neighboring country that was our namesake (Wallachia). We can look at the religious history of Judaism in that part of the world. We can look at the language that shares our name (Vlach) and is still spoken today in a few isolated regions of the Balkans. Finally, we can look at the linguistic roots of the name itself.
So let us start with the word that is our name. The word is used to refer to a people, to a land, to a language, and to a sheep.
We know that variants of the name/word are used in a number of countries that were once part of the Roman Empire, that the word appears to have a Roman/Latin origin, and it has a meaning of: the others - the strangers - the foreigners - the ones that are not like us.
To help you draw your own conclusions, a short collection of excerpts and links exploring our linguistic roots ....
"All origins become mysterious if we search far enough into the past. And almost all peoples, when we look at their earliest origins, turn out to have come from somewhere else....
Only the remnants of a Latin-speaking population survived in parts of the central and west-central Balkans; when it re-emerges into the historical record in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find its members leading a semi-nomadic life as shepherds, horse-breeders and travelling muleteers. These were the Vlachs, who can still be seen tending their flocks in the mountains of northern Greece, Macedonia and Albania today.The name 'Vlach' was a word used by the Slavs for those they encountered who spoke a strange, usually Latinate, language; the Vlachs' own name for themselves is 'Aromanians' (Aromani). As this name suggests, the Vlachs are closely linked to the Romanians: their two languages (which, with a little practice, are mutually intelligible) diverged only in the ninth or tenth century. While Romanian historians have tried to argue that the Romanian-speakers have always lived in the territory of Romania (originating, it is claimed, from Romanized Dacian tribes and/or Roman legionaries), there is compelling evidence to show that the Romanian-speakers were originally part of the same population as the Vlachs, whose language and way of life were developed somewhere to the south of the Danube. Only in the twelfth century did the early Romanian-speakers move northwards into Romanian territory."
- Origins: Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs -Chapter 2 in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo, a short history (Macmilan, London, 1998, p. 22-40)
"Vlach is itself an interesting word. It seems to be a derivative from the same Germanic word cognate to welsch in German and Welsh in English, both meaning Roman, whether the Romans be Latin-speaking or Celtic-speaking. Vlach itself is Slavic (taking that form in Czech) and could mean Italian or Romanian, though the same word, with appropriate case endings, turns up in mediaeval Latin (Blachi) and Greek (Blakhoi, pronounced Vlakhi), only applied to the Romance speakers of the Balkans. It also occurs in Polish as Wloch, in Hungarian as Olasz, in Russian as Volokh, in Yiddish as Walach, and in various other forms even in those same languages (cf. "Vlach," A Dictionary of Surnames, Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges [Oxford University Press, 1988], p. 558). Vlach also significantly turns up in the name of the first Romanian principality: Wallachia (or sometimes "Walachia"). Thus, we can imagine the word being left behind in the Balkan Sprachbund by the German tribes during their stay in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
For many centuries Vlach was a spoken and not a written language. When it was committed to writing, the Cyrillic alphabet was used, in line with the Orthodox faith of the people. Later, a national consciousness arose in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, where the language came to be called "Romanian."
- The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History - Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D
"Welsh - O.E. Wilisc, Wylisc (W.Saxon), Welisc, Wælisc (Anglian and Kentish), from Wealh, Walh "Celt, Briton, Welshman, non-Germanic foreigner;" in Tolkien's definition, "common Gmc. name for a man of what we should call Celtic speech," but also applied to speakers of Latin, hence O.H.G. Walh, Walah "Celt, Roman, Gaulish," and O.N. Valir "Gauls, Frenchmen" (Dan. vælsk "Italian, French, southern"); from P.Gmc. *Walkhiskaz, from a Celtic name represented by L. Volcæ "ancient Celtic tribe in southern Gaul." The word survives in Wales, Cornwall, Walloon, walnut, and in surnames Walsh and Wallace. Borrowed in O.C.S. as vlachu, and applied to Romanians, hence Walachia. Welsh was used disparagingly of inferior or substitute things, hence Welsh rabbit (1725), also Welsh rarebit (1785) "
- ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY
"Sir William Wallace of Braveheart fame, the country of Wales, and a walnut are all closely related, although not in the way one might think. The Germanic wealh meant "foreign", and both Wales and Cornwall are so-named because they were full of Kelts who didn't speak English... The family names Welch, Walsh, and Wallace (Norman French Waleis) are from this "no speak English" sense. The word was by no means restricted to the English vs the Kelts. The Walloons (Waalsch) don't speak good Dutch, the Swiss canton of Valais obstinately speaks French instead of German, and residents of the province of Wallachia speak Rumanian (Vlach) instead of German. Welscher is German for "Italian", and it even got borrowed by the Slavs — the Polish word for Italy is Wlochy."
- Words Words Words - John Dierdorf
"VLACHS - ...The name is thus of foreign origin, the native Vlachs continuing to this day to call themselves 'Rumani', 'Romeni' or even 'Romani' and it is from the native pronunciation of the Roman name that we have the equivalent expression Rouman, a word which must by no means be confined to that part of the Vlach race inhabiting the present kingdom of Roumania...
This Vlach or Rouman race constitutes a distinct division of the Latin family of peoples, widely disseminated throughout eastern Europe, both north and south of the Danube. North of the Danube the Roumans inhabit, besides Walachia and Moldavia, Bessarabia and the adjoining South-Russian districts, a large part of Transylvania and the Hungarian Banat, and extend sporadically from the Bug to the Adriatic...The centre of gravity of the Vlach or Rouman race is at the present unquestionably north of the Danube, and corresponds roughly to the limits of Trajan's Dacian province. From this circumstance the popular idea has arisen that the race itself represents the descendants of the Romanized population of Trajan's Dacia, which was assumed to have maintained an unbroken existence in Walachia, Transylvania., beneath the dominion of a succession of invaders."
- THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA Chicago, 1895
"The Etymology of the Denomination of ‘Wallachia’ in the Ramusian Vision
A detail utilised by Paul Ramusio and that could not be detected in John Baptist's Navigationi et Viaggi is the one referring to the etymology of the name of 'Wallachia", namely its descent from the name of a supposed Roman governor of the region, that had been Flaccus. Although there has not been written any study exclusively dedicated to the appearance and to the evolution of this tradition, it may be asserted that there was a Humanist invention, in the general tendency to find out legendary founders for every population, on the model of the Rome's foundation by Eneas. Beside Francus, Hispanus, or Britannicus, the Humanist historiography made its choice in the Wallachian case for this Flaccus or Flachus. This option was different than the other ones by the fact that, while the others 'founders' were considered as descending from the Trojans, Flaccus had been a Roman dignitary. There is also an evidence that the Humanists discovered that the respective population had Roman origins...
At least in the period when Paul Ramusio lived, the Wallachian population's descent from that hypothetical general Flaccus was an idea shared by some Humanists, among whom we mention Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the Saxon George Reycherstorffer (around 1495 - after 1554), and later Mark Bandini (?-1650) . With the exception of Adolf Armbruster, the Romanian historiography rather confined itself to enumerate the authors who had denied this legend than to follow its evolution.
Conclusions
We consider that the chronicle written by Paul Ramusio on the second half of the 16th century brought new determinations regarding this state. The erudition, and also the desire to do not leave any uncovered ground determined Paul Ramusio to enter into the essence of this new reality. He followed the geography, the structures, and especially the past of the three components that caused the Crusader knights' immobilisation and explicit the end of the Crusade: the Wallachian, the Bulgarian, and the Cuman ones. He raised questions and offered solutions, especially respecting the building of the State of the Assenides' or of its leader's image, the placement of Johannitza Kaloyan's Wallachia, the name given to the inhabitants from the North of the Danube, or the placement of different populations that the Crusaders got into contact with. In a region such as the Balkan Peninsula, whose heterogeneity and complexity were and still are keywords, there is a real adventure to attempt the deciphering of the different peoples that live in. "
- A Humanist Vision regarding the Fourth Crusade and the State of the Assenides. The Chronicle of Paul Ramusio (Paulus Rhamnusius) Chapter 14 by Şerban Marin
