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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word rom

rom1 rum

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1793 a document in Iorga's Studii și documente, as rum
Borrowed from
French rhum
Ultimate origin
English rum

Pronunciation

Forms

rom n (plural romuri)[1]

Etymology

The word for the drink is borrowed from French rhum together with German Rum.[2][3][4][5][1] Ciorănescu names French alone.[6] Marcu and Maneca also compare the English word.[7][7] Scriban adds a Turkish form beside the French and English ones.[8]

The French word, first spelled ⟨rum⟩ (1688), then ⟨rome⟩ (1723) and ⟨rhum⟩ (1768), was borrowed from English rum, recorded from 1654.[9] The English word also gave the German one.[9] Its origin is obscure.[9] It may be a shortening of rumbullion or rumbustion, recorded a few years earlier.[9] In Barbados these were names for a strong drink that often caused brawls.[9][10] Kluge prefers a Malay source, Malay brum (“aromatic drink”).[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a document of 1793 published by Iorga, which asks for two bottles of a drink „ce să cheamă rum” “which is called rum”.[5][4][3]

Semantic evolution

Writers of the first half of the 19th century use the form rum: Heliade has a sailor drinking rum from the barrel, and Costache Negruzzi writes of Jamaica rum.[5][12] A list of goods unloaded from ships, printed in 1832, has rom.[5] Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 gives romŭ, a spirit made from sugar cane.[13] Caragiale and Delavrancea use rom, and rum is now regional.[5][2] Modern dictionaries add the measure of rum served in a small glass.[2]

Timeline

  • 1793 – rum in a document published by Iorga, the first record.[5][3][4]
  • 1832 – rom in a list of imported goods.[5]
  • 1870 – romŭ in Costinescu's dictionary.[13]

Meanings

Noun

  1. rum: a strong spirit made by fermenting and distilling sugar-cane juice or molasses, or from refined alcohol with added essences, coloured with caramel: ceai cu rom.[2][3]
  2. The amount of rum served in a small glass.[2]

rom2 Rom, Romani person

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
Bulletin linguistique, vol. II
Borrowed from
Romani rom
Ultimate origin
Romani rom

Pronunciation

Forms

rom m (plural romi, feminine equivalent romă)[1]

Etymology

The word for a member of the Roma is borrowed from Romani rom (“man”).[2][3][5][1] Wiktionary writes the Romani word rrom and traces it to Sanskrit डोम (ḍoma, “member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers”) or डोम्ब (ḍomba).[1] Scriban derived it from român, his own view.[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is in the second volume of Rosetti's Bulletin linguistique, a periodical whose first volume appeared in 1933.[3] The DLR quotes the plural romi from Viața Românească of 1952, of a band of Romani musicians.[5]

Semantic evolution

Dimitrescu notes that the word is older but came into frequent use only after December 1989, as the name preferred to țigan.[14] Newspapers of the 1990s debated the choice.[14] The weekly 22 argued in 1998 that the spelling rrom with a double ⟨r⟩ had no historical, etymological or phonetic justification.[14] DEX 2009 records the spelling rrom, a feminine romă and an adjective;[2][15] DEX 1998 had only the masculine noun.[2][15]

Timeline

  • 1930s – the first record, in the second volume of the Bulletin linguistique.[3]
  • 1952 – the plural romi in Viața Românească.[5]
  • 1953 – romi in Scînteia.[5]
  • 1998 – the weekly 22 criticizes the spelling rrom.[14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A Romani person, a Rom: țigan.[2][3]

Adjective

  1. Romani, of the Roma.[2]

Usage notes

DEX 2009 numbers the drink rom¹ and the Rom rom².[2] A third, regional word rom, recorded in Transylvania from 1899, means fine river sand or ground ore that contains gold.[3] MDA2 and the DLR call its origin unknown.[3][5] Ciorănescu, after Candrea, takes it from Hungarian rom (“rubble”).[6] Tamás thinks a link with the Hungarian word for “ruin, debris” possible.[16] The sense “gold sand” would, however, need records from Hungarian mining language.[16] The Hungarian word itself is recorded only from 1750, a back-formation of the language reform from romlik (“to decay”).[17]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 960
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 722
  4. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. rom
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. rom
  6. ^ a b Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. rom
  7. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. rom
  8. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1135
  9. ^ a b c d e Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  10. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  11. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 777
  12. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 769
  13. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 450
  14. ^ a b c d Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. rom
  15. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan” (1998), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 2nd ed., București: Univers Enciclopedic, p. 932
  16. ^ a b Tamás, Lajos (1966), Etymologisch-historisches Wörterbuch der ungarischen Elemente im Rumänischen, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 673
  17. ^ Benkő, Loránd (ed.) (1967–1976), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 3, 435

Related etymologies

  • mișto · also from Romani
  • nasol · also from Romani
  • gagică · also from Romani
  • cap · also from French
  • dura · also from French
  • pur · also from French
  • pană · also from French
  • pat · also from French
Cite this entry

“Rom.” Etymologically, 12 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/rom. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

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