▲ ALTCULTURE MAGAZINE Nr.107, 07/2026 ▲
▲▲▲ ALTCULTURE MAGAZINE Nr.107, 7/2026 ▲▲▲ Noi mai credem încă în cultură!
The Vanishing Aromanian Today — recently launched on Amazon!
Abstract: Written for those brothers of mine who are close to me, but far from their identity, this book offers a comprehensive journey through the history, resilience, and modern challenges of a remarkable people without a state, yet never without an identity.
Tracing the thread of Aromanian history from Antiquity to the present, the work explores the diverse etymology and background of their names through Theodor Capidan’s lens, contrasts simplistic stereotypes with nineteenth-century accounts of flourishing urban and commercial communities by travelers like William Martin Leake, Gustav Weigand, and Ami Boué, and confronts the silent, contemporary threat of globalized assimilation. It stands as a vital call to action for each new generation to preserve its language, traditions, and collective memory.
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▲ ALTCULTURE MAGAZINE Nr.107, 07/2026 ▲
This book is written for those brothers of mine who are close to me,
but far from their identity.
One People, Many Names
Aromanians, Vlachs, Machedoni, Koutzovlachs, Marksmen, Makedon-Aromanians, Macedonian-Romanians, and others… So many names for the same people.
For anyone approaching Aromanian history for the first time, this diversity may seem confusing. In reality, each name has its own historical, linguistic or political background.
Some were used by the people themselves, others by their neighbors, while others were created or imposed by scholars, administrations or changing political circumstances.
Theodor Capidan provides one of the clearest explanations in his monumental work Macedonia-Romanians: Ethnography, History, Language.
He explains that the name Aromanians developed from the older form Rumân, becoming Arumân and eventually Armân through linguistic changes characteristic of the Aromanian dialects. He also records the different names used by neighboring peoples, including Koutzovlachs among Greeks and Goga among northern Albanians.
As Capidan puts it:
[…] the name Rumân, receiving its prosthesis a, […] came to be pronounced Arumân, and he, with the fall of u from the first syllable, Armân.
The variety of names therefore tells us less about different peoples than about the many historical environments in which the Aromanians lived.
▲ ALTCULTURE MAGAZINE Nr.107, 07/2026 ▲
How Contemporaries Saw Them
The history of a people is not written only through official documents. The observations of travelers, diplomats and scholars who encountered them directly can be equally revealing. William Martin Leake, Gustav Weigand and Ami Boué left valuable descriptions of Aromanian communities in the nineteenth century. Their accounts are particularly important because they contradict the later stereotype of the Aromanians as merely isolated mountain shepherds. In Capidan’s account, William Martin Leake compared Aromanian villages in the Pindus with the most flourishing cities in Greece.
Capidan then cites Gustav Weigand, who had visited the region later and described settlements such as Siracu, Calarl’i, Mețova and Vlaho-Livadi. Referring to Leake’s observations, Weigand praised their „grandeur”, their „clean and pretty appearance”, and the solid construction of their houses.
Capidan adds that Weigand was even more impressed by Kruşova, Nevesca and other northern villages, writing:
If he had known Cruşova, Nevesca and other villages to the north, then surely his astonishment would have changed into admiration.
Here, the quotation is reproduced by Capidan in his 1943 work as part of his discussion of Weigand’s observations. Ami Boué provides another revealing contemporary testimony. In La Turquie d’Europe, published in Paris in 1840, Boué described the Wallachians of the Ottoman Empire as having developed agricultural, commercial and industrial communities in which „happiness, ease and even wealth reign.”
Taken together, these contemporary accounts provide an important corrective to simplistic descriptions of the Aromanian past.
The Aromanians were not merely people who survived in the mountains. They built communities, they traded, they developed institutions. And, in some places, they achieved considerable prosperity while preserving their language and identity in a multilingual and politically changing Balkan world.
Why This Book?
The history of the Aromanians has often been written in fragments, viewed through political interests and Balkan rivalries, or simply passed over in silence. I have tried to gather these fragments into a single work and trace the thread of their history from Antiquity to the present. The reader will discover the story of a people without a state, but never without identity: periods of economic and cultural flourishing, followed by wars, persecution, emigration and repeated attempts at assimilation.
The book follows the emergence of Aromanian schools and churches, Romania’s support, the struggle for recognition, the tragedies of the Balkan Wars and the two world wars, colonization in Dobrogea, and the disappearance of Aromanian institutions under communism.
But beyond these events lies the story of a community that, for almost two millennia, has preserved its language, traditions and sense of belonging.
I did not write this book to end a dispute or impose a single interpretation. I wrote it because too many generations grew up without knowing who the Aromanians were or what place they occupy in the history of the Balkans and Romania.
With this history in my blood, I hope this work will bring clarity to a field where serious research, prejudice and confusion have accumulated alike.
If it awakens the interest of those who have looked with indifference upon the destiny of this people, and brings even a few Aromanians closer to their own identity, I will consider that I have achieved my purpose.
New Times, New Ideas
‘To which family should one connect the inhabitants of ancient Dacia with those of the Vlach tribes of European Turkey?
Do they belong to the ancient nationality of the Pelasgians?
Do they descend from Roman settlers?
An agglomeration of people pulled in from the four corners of Europe, would it have a nationality?’
▲ ALTCULTURE MAGAZINE Nr.107, 07/2026 ▲
Identity Between Memory and Rebirth
It has been about fifteen years since I published my first book dedicated to the Aromanians, their history, and their problems. At that time, I was convinced that I had said almost everything essential about this people.
In the meantime, however, I have come to understand that history is never definitively closed. It remains open, constantly enriched by new research, new documents, and new interpretations that appear with the passing of time.
But history has changed, and so has the world we live in.
If previous generations were forced to fight for survival in the face of wars, empires, and the great political convulsions of the Balkans, today’s generation faces an adversary that is harder to perceive and, for that very reason, more dangerous: assimilation.
A language does not die in a single day, nor does the identity of a people
disappear overnight.
It begins almost imperceptibly. Children no longer learn the language of their parents and grandparents. Traditions are reduced to folkloric curiosities. Customs survive only on a few holidays, and collective memory slowly begins to break apart, generation after generation.
This is the great challenge facing today’s Aromanians. For almost two millennia they have resisted migrations, invasions, wars, border changes, and denationalization policies. They have survived where many other communities have disappeared.
And yet, paradoxically, precisely in the era when Europe speaks so often about cultural diversity and the protection of intangible heritage, their existence seems more fragile than ever.
I do not say these things out of pessimism, but because this is the reality we see in almost all Aromanian communities in the Balkans and in the Diaspora.
In many families, the Aromanian language is no longer transmitted to children. In others, it is gradually replaced by the language of the majority.
Many young people know their origins only through the stories of their grandparents, without being able to hold a conversation in the language of their ancestors.
In a few decades, this change may irreversibly alter the very structure of a community. That is why I felt the need to return to this subject.
Not because there is a need for yet another book about the Aromanians, but because each generation has a moral obligation to tell its own story and to leave to those who follow the testimony of the time in which it lived.
History is not a museum
where exhibits remain unchanged.
History is alive.
Each generation complements it, interprets it and understands it through its own experience.
What This Book Seeks
In recent years, numerous studies have appeared on the origins of the Aromanians, the evolution of their language, their economic and cultural contribution to the development of the Balkans, as well as the current problems related to their legal status and identity in the different states where they live. Some of this research confirms older conclusions. Others open new perspectives and raise questions that deserve careful analysis.
This book tries to take all this into account, so it does not follow only the chronological thread of events.
It aims to look at the history of the Aromanians as the history of a people that managed to survive without ever having a state of its own, but without giving up the consciousness of its identity.
It also seeks to show that identity is never preserved by memory alone. Memory is important, perhaps indispensable, but memory left to itself becomes fragile. It needs language, education, transmission, and the will to remain a living presence in the world.
In the following pages we will meet pastors and merchants, scholars and teachers, politicians and diplomats, priests and simple people who understood that language, faith, and education are the foundations on which the existence of any community rests.
We will see how the great Aromanian commercial centers appeared, how cities such as Moscopolis flourished, how Romanian schools and churches in the south of the Danube developed, but also how all these were destroyed by wars, nationalisms, and political interests that definitively changed the face of the Balkans.
We will follow the contribution of the Aromanians to the economic and cultural development of the region, their role in the political and intellectual life of modern Romania, but also the dramatic destiny of the communities left outside the Romanian borders.
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Questions for Today
At the same time, we will try to understand what it means to be an Aromanian today.
Is Aromanian identity still just a family legacy?
Can the language still be saved?
Can traditions still pass from one generation to another in a world dominated by globalization and cultural uniformity?
These questions do not concern only the Aromanians. They concern all historical communities that are trying to preserve their identity in an ever-changing world.
Perhaps that is why this book is not intended exclusively for Aromanians. It is aimed at all those who believe that Europe’s cultural diversity is a value that must be known, understood, and defended.
If, at the end of the reading, the reader comes to know the history of this people better and to understand why the Aromanians have managed to survive almost two thousand years without losing awareness of their origin, then the purpose of this book will have been achieved.
And if it awakens in the souls of a few young Aromanians the desire to rediscover their language, traditions, and history, I will consider that the years spent researching and writing these pages were not in vain.
Readings in English
 | The Vanishing Aromanian $9.95 to buy Other formats: Paperback |
 | NEW MILLENNIUM MASONIC ETIQUETTE $9.95 to buy Other formats: Hardcover, Paperback |
 | Even You Are a Freemason? Kindle Edition $4.95 Other formats: Paperback |
 | THE THIRD KEY: The Story of a lost Realm $4.95 to buy Other formats: Paperback |
 | Theosophy, The Final Answer $4.95 to buy Other formats: Paperback |
 | NEW MILLENNIUM MASONIC ETIQUETTE Paperback $19.95 |
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