rumân

Where it comes from

Inherited from Latin rōmānus. Variant of român. As this now obsolete form of the word was mostly used before the language's orthographic reform and shifting of script to the current Latin-based one, it would have been represented mostly with the old Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. The sense of "serf" or "peasant" arose in what is now southern Romania as many of the common people came to be tied to the land as part of a feudal system.

Compare Aromanian armãn, Istro-Romanian rumăr, Albanian rëmër (“Wallachian; shepard”). Compare also the designations of some other Romance speakers for their languages, such as Romansh rumantsch, Old French romanz, as well as Ladin ladin, Ladino ladino. The Romanian word also has a neological doublet, roman, which was borrowed later.