Usually the term "vlachos" for someone from Southern Greece means a person from a village or a sheep-herder, but the people of Northern Greece recognize the term "vlachoi" as the previously-nomadic group of people that live near Grevena and in Thessaly. Vlachoi have their own traditions and even their own language. Yet, they consider themselves Greek and, of course, speak Greek, too. The question historians have been researching is: Where did they come from?
They're called...
First of all, there are Vlachoi in Greece, in Romania, in Albania and in FYROM. The ones in Greece were given the name "Koutsovlachoi" from a misinterpretation of the Turkish word for"Little Vlachia," which is what the Turks called the area of Thessaly during the occupation, as opposed to "Big Vlachia," which was the area around the Danube River. Vlachoi call themselves "Armani" in their dialect, which comes from the Byzantine and Roman times, and it was the name given to those who spoke latin in the eastern empire. The word Vlachos,is thought to have come from the Slavic word Vlah (which meant foreigner) or the German word Walechen (which means non-German, Latin).
Location, location, location
Today, most Vlachoi live in Thessaly and Northern Greece. They were nomads and herd-keepers, some of whom turned into wealthy merchants. For these people the most important thing was keeping their herds of sheep well-fed, so that their families could live well. This is why they grazed the mountainous villages of Northern Greece in the summer and in winter they started looking for new "virgin" land for their herd to graze. Therefore, at the end of summer, they packed everything up and made the week or month-long trip down to the fields of Thessaly, where they eventually established other villages. When the temperatures started rising again, they would head up to the mountain once more.
Language and Descent
Where Vlachoi come from is a question whose answer has been much sought after by modern sociologists in the Balkans, but none seem to have reached a satisfying answer.....
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