Jora Roman, in his book on the dances of northern Dobrogea,^[1] gives a list of villages that he terms “old Romanian” in order to separate these from the post-Ottoman immigration into Dobrogea from other regions of Romania. These villages are within the areas documented as Romanian in the works of Ion Ionescu de la Brad in 1850^[3] and Guillaume Lejean in 1861^[2] which both record the ethnicities at the end of the Ottoman period.

The “old Romanian” villages form a chain along the Danube from just south of Cernavoda town to the north of Lake Razim. The wider area between Măcin and Lake Razin was not part of the medieval Principality of Karvuna of the despot Dobrotitsa. This area was at times under the rule of the Wallachian Besarab dynasty.

The region of Dobruja takes its name from the Ottoman rendition of Dobrotitsa, who was the ruler from 1347 of the Principality of Karvuna (14th century) prior to the Ottoman invasion. It is not possible to determine the ethnographic history during the Ottoman period as both the Bulgarian Slav and Romanian Latin speakers were only recorded by religion as Orthodox.

Note: I use Dobruja (the English spelling) for the whole historic region, Dobrogea for the northern part now in Romania, Dobrudzha for the southern part now in Bulgaria.