Guillaume de Rubruquis:

 

„A baskírok ugyanazt a nyelvet beszélik, mint a magyarok … Innen, Baskíria tartományából jöttek a hunok, akiket később magyaroknak neveztek, s ezért hívják Nagy-Magyarországnak … Velük együtt jöttek a blakok, bolgárok és vandálok. Ugyanis ebből a Nagy-Bolgárországból jöttek azok a bolgárok, akik Konstantinápolyhoz közel, a Duna túlsó partján laknak. És a baskírok mellett vannak az illakok, ami ugyanannyi, mint blak, csak a tatárok nem tudják a b-t kiejteni, és tőlük jöttek azok, akik most Aszen földjén vannak. Tudniillik mind a kettőt illaknak hívják, ezeket is, meg amazokat is.”

 

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Vlassko is situated along the northwestern rim of the Carpathian Mountains … “ Vlach,: “Valach,” “Volach,” “Vlakh” and other variations of the term date back in time nearly 2,000 years and refer to a variety of “Latinized” people whose origin is ultimately the Roman Empire (Magocsi 1993). In archaic Czech, for example, “Vlassko” means Italy, and “Valach” refers to “Italian” (Radio Prague 1999). Today, only isolated groups of peoples in the Balkans (Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria) are referred to as Vlachs and these people speak Aromanian (e.g., Wace & Thomson 1914, Winnifrith 1987, Caragui 1999). The Romanian and Moldavians, who speak another language derived from Latin, Daco-Romanian, represent the largest concentration of Latinized people of southeastern Europe. Historically, Romanians and Moldavians were known as Vlachs. The Romanian province of Walachia was named for the Valachs and served as their traditional homeland. Other groups of Vlachs have been assimilated into the local populations. The Vlach culture of Vlassko was largely destroyed at the end of the Thirty Year War (1648).

 

In Vlassko, the first widespread reference to Vlachs occurred during the Thirty Years War and are well documented in Dostal (1956) and Polisensky (1971). For example, Jan Amos Comenius wrote in 1960 “Moravians of the mountains around Vsetin, called Wallachians, are a warlike people…they refuses to accept the Habsburg yoke and for three whole years defended their freedom with the sword.” Later, in 1624, he wrote “the inhabitants of the lordship of Vsetin and the mountains thereabout (who are called Wallachians) continued to resist with arms and could not be brought to deny their faith or offer submission…” In 1628, Jesuit missionaries, in abandoning their attempt to convert the Vlachs to Catholicism, stated that the “inhabitants of Vlassko were Valachs and hence utterly infractory.” Zlin town records from 1621 refer to “the Wallachians, who are the local rabble,…” Albrecht Waldstein, Habsburg Military lord of Vsetin, wrote in 1621 about the expected uprising of the locals and referred to the Vlachs as “Wallachians” against whom he did not have sufficient support to mount a campaign. A Habsburg commissioner in 1622, writing about the local Moravians, stated that “the people are inclined more to the enemy and the Wallachians.”

 

Hanna (1988), based upon a compilation of Czech names typical of Texas, demonstrated two important points. First, the most common names are not typical of the Czech Republic as a whole, but rather are distinctive of Vlassko and surrounding areas. Second, many of these names are not Czech in origin but rather Romanian (Baca, Balcar, Sandera), Hungarian (e.g. Orsak), Slovakian (e.g. Fajkus), and Polish (Adamcik). The collection of surnames from Vlassko is probably representative of origins of peoples who settled in Vlassko, and also coincides with the presumed route traveled by the Valachs through the Carpathians.