Valea Timocului, or just Timoc, is part of a wider region known as Timočka Krajina in Serbian. This area of the Timoc valley watershed is predominantly Romanian speaking and straddles the modern Serbian–Bulgarian border. The villages in the hills west of Negotin have a predominantly Serbian ethnicity. The Romanian speaking peoples are known as Vlasi in Serbian or Rumân in their mother tongue, or otherwise referred to as Țărani (or Carani) meaning peasants that work the land. Their language is related to the Oltenian dialect of Romanian, as opposed to other Vlasi further west that speak the Banat Romanian dialect. The term Câmpeni (meaning plains in Romanian or written as Kmpeni in Serbian) is used for the plains either side of the Timoc river where this joins the Danube river. The term Pădureni (land covered with trees) is used for both the hilly areas in Serbia and Bulgaria.