Istroromans

The Istrorumans (Istrian vlahi; self-names: chichi, chiribiri, vlasi - i.-rum. The Istrorumans (Vlahi; in Croatian: čiri) are one of the Eastern Romani peoples and one of the smallest autochthonous national minorities in the world. At the beginning of the XXI century, Istrorumans, numbering from 500 to 1000 people, live mainly in the northeast of the Istrian peninsula, Republic of Croatia, in several settlements near Ucka Mountain (Monte Maggiore).

Andrei Glavina, "The Apostle Istro-Romanian," 1920.

In the XVIII century their habitat stretched from Trieste in the north to a number of Adriatic islands in the south. Historically, the native language is Istro-Romanian. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Istrorumans became bilingual, and by the end of the twentieth century, they switched almost entirely to the Shtokava dialect of the Croatian language. The faithful, historically Orthodox, in the Croatian environment embraced Catholicism. Names and surnames are completely Croatianized (e.g., Valnja Smilović, Zvezdana Vrzić, etc.). The historical occupation of the Istrorumans, as of all groups in the Wallachian region, is semi-nomadic herding, nowadays combined with agriculture adopted from the Slavs. In the mid-20th century, a small group of Istrorumans emigrated to New York City, USA, where they carry out activities to preserve the memory of this language

History

The question of the history and ethnogenesis of the people is debatable. According to the linguist O. Densuşianu, the Istrorumans represent several layers of the Dacorumanian population of different eras. Unlike the autochthonous Romanian-speaking Dalmatians, several groups of Wallachians, including the Morlachians, migrated to Istria from Dacia between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. In the course of their long migration, the Dacoromanian groups went first to the south, where they came into contact with the Arumanians and Slavs in the eighth and tenth centuries, and then left for the northwest Balkans in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The Istro-Romanian vocabulary therefore lacks Hungarian elements, which are abundant in Romanian. The endoethnonym Romanian is not preserved.

Map showing the migration of the Balkan Romance peoples, including the route by which the Istro-Romanians may have settled in Istriа