Historical names of Transylvania

Transylvania has had different names applied to it in several traditions.

Transylvania

The first reference to the region was as the Medieval Latin expression ("land beyond the forest") in a document dating to 1075. The expression ("area beyond the forest") appears in the 12th century in ' and subsequently as ' in medieval documents of the Hungarian kingdom.

'/'

The first Hungarian form recorded was (12th century, in the Gesta Hungarorum) while the first Romanian form recorded was in 1432 as Ardeliu. The initial a/e difference between the names can be found in other Hungarian loans in Romanian, such as Hungarian ‘gooseberry’ → Romanian , , as well as in placenames, e.g., → , and .

In the early 16th century, the Erdőség form, literally 'forest', was also used in Hungarian (Érdy-codex).

According to the Romanian linguist Nicolae Drăganu, the Romanian Ardeal came from the Hungarian Erdély. The Hungarian name of Transylvania evolved over time from Erdőelü, Erdőelv, Erdőel, Erdeel in chronicles and written charters from 1200 up to late 1300. In written sources from 1390, we can find also the form Erdel, which can be read also as Erdély. There is evidence for that in the written Wallachian Chancellery Charters expressed in Slavonic where the word appears as Erûdelû (1432), Ierûdel, Ardelîu (1432), ardelski (1460, 1472, 1478–1479, 1480, 1498, 1507–1508, 1508), erdelska, ardelska (1498). With the first texts written in Romanian (1513) the name Ardeal appears to be written.

Drăganu takes into consideration the form Ardalos for the inherited word, dismissing it by proving that the evolution of such an etymon according to Romanian phonetics does not match the current form. Drăganu claims that the greatest Romanian philologists and historians maintain that Ardeal came from Hungarian. This theory is also supported by the Romanian historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, according to which the Romanians didn't have a name for the region as a whole. Transylvania, not being a state organized and ruled by a Romanian political power, did not have a specific name in the Romanian language. For administrative, communication and coexistence reasons, the name Ardeal was adopted from the Hungarian Erdély.

The consensus of linguists and historians on the etymology of both Erdély and Transylvania is as follows:

• The modern Hungarian form Erdély was derived from the Old Hungarian '/ (transcription: ), literally ‘beyond the forest’ (). means ‘woods, forest’, and the elv suffix meant ‘beyond’ and was applied to a type of border region (gyepű) and the associated social and economic organisation; for example, (near Ungvár), and archaic , ‘Wallachia’, lit. "beyond the snowy mountains" ( in Latin, modern ), refers to a region lying beyond the Carpathian Mountains if viewed from Hungary, and was under strong Hungarian political influence during the Middle Ages. If viewed from Hungary, Erdő-elü probably refers to the fact that the Transylvanian plateau is separated in the northwest from the Great Hungarian Plain and Crișana plains by the well-forested Apuseni mountains. Alternatively, from the point of view east of the Carpathians, the name could suggest that the Hungarian name was created in Etelköz/Atelkuzu (Hungarian homeland in southern Ukraine), prior to settling on the Hungarian plain.
• The Medieval Latin form (1077), later (from another point of view after the foundation of Hungary in 895), was a direct translation from the Hungarian form.