Re: Naming the conlang

At 10:25 7/9/2004, John Cowan wrote:


>The general principle is that names for Romance languages derived from "Roman"
>or "Latin" only exist when the language is surrounded by other non-Romance
>languages (examples: Romanian, Rumantsh, Ladin, Ladino).  Romance languages
>surrounded by other Romance languages need unique names, since "Roman" and
>"Latin" could be applied to them all.
The con-exception is Slvanjec.  The Slvany originally referred
to themselves as _Rumany_ and their language as _Rumanjec_, but
then two factors weighed in for a change of practice: in the 16th
century _Rumany_ came to mean 'Catholic' as opposed to Orthodox or
protestants.  Before then there had only been Rumany who were all
catholics, Magyars who were also catholics and Rusyns who were all
orthodox.  Now there was suddenly a third religious affiliation
which cut across the traditional ethnic barriers. Then there was
also the Roma.  Although the Slevans referred to them as _Cygany_
the similarity between the self-designations of the two peoples
became troublesome.  All this lead to the use of _Slvanjany_ i.e.
as an abbreviation of ROMANI SILVANIANI.  The term _Slván_ was
suggested by Pavel Mrác in the 19th century and caught on because
the independence movement adopted it.  Incidentally Mrác was also
opposed of the use of the term _labín_ 'white' to distinguish
Slevans from Roma.

BTW the mere fact of Slvanjec and Wenedyk being contiguous with
each other might be enough to make them have names not derived
from ROMANU or LATINU.


/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)