Romanian Alphabets

Prior to the 1860s, Romanian was predominately written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Even some use of the old alphabet continued until 1989, until Moldova adopted the Latin script popular in Romania.

As such, for Romanian Paleography, it is necessary to be familiar with both the Cyrillic and Latin Alphabets used the documents you will come across, in both church and civil records.

Cyrillic Alphabet

The use of the Cyrillic Alphabet comes into use in the area that now makes up Romanian and Moldova during the Middle Ages with the use of Old Slavonic in church and civil records. When Romanian begins to be written in the 15th century, the alphabet is adopted and used until the 19th century, especially in church records.

Transitional alphabet

The transitional process between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets began in 1828 and gained popularity in 1840. In an effort to latinize Romania and unify it, it combined the older Cyrillic style with the Latin Alphabet, mixing the forms and writing systems. By the end of the 19th century, the transitional alphabet was completely replaced in Romania by the Latin alphabet.

Latin Alphabet

The modern Romanian alphabet consists of 31 characters, altering several from their original Latin characters to fit with Romanian pronunciation and grammar. With the use of this alphabet, especially in earlier records, some letters, such as I and J, are interchangeable, so a name like Ioana in modern Romanian could be spelled Joana.