O necesară reconsiderare a originii cuvântului românesc boier și a boieriei ca instituţie specifică românilor, albanezilor și slavilor medievali (I)

Abstract

The history of the Romanian (Rm.) term boier (a medieval aristocratic title) is long and rather confusing. Practically, all dictionaries that include entries on that term present it as ultimately derived from Old Church Slavonic (OCS) bolʹarinʺ. The latter, in its turn, has been presented – in keeping with a suggestion coming from Miklosich – as a “Turanian” word borrowed by South-Danubian Slavs from their Turkic (Bolgar) ruling elite of the 7th – 9th centuries. The present author considers, however, that the mainstream etymologic interpretations of Rm. boier and of its putative OCS source-word are hardly tenable. Part I of this study provides a inguisticethnologic-historical background for a new hypothesis, which does not center on the above-mentioned OCS term (as supposedly borrowed from Turkic), but rather on the deeply-rooted tradition of boyarship in Romania and on two lexical families that display striking correspondence (in roots and suffixes), namely Romanian boiér-boiereásăboieréşte-boieríe-boierí and Albanian bujár-bujoréshë-bujarísht-bujarí-bujerój. Worthy of attention is the fact that the latter lexical family appears to be etymologically linked with the Albanian verb buj ‘to lodge, to take up one’s lodging’, a word for which Gustav Meyer – in his etymologic dictionary of Albanian, 1891 – indicated a significant series of Old Germanic cognates. (Actually, Alb. buj may be a borrowing proper, from Old Germanic, like several other Albanian words for which the respective origin has already been demonstrated.) Such facts open the way for a discussion on the probable connection between the medieval Southeast European boyarship and the Roman institution of hospitalitas, whose earliest beneficiaries were East Germanic foederati. Further arguments along that line – as well as final conclusions – will make up part II of the present study, to be published in a future issue of Arheologia Moldovei.