Dava (Dacian)

Dava (Latinate plural davae) was a Geto-Dacian name for a city, town or fortress. Generally, the name indicated a tribal center or an important settlement, usually fortified. Some of the Dacian settlements and the fortresses employed the Murus Dacicus traditional construction technique.

Many davae on the Roman Dacia selection from Tabula Peutingeriana

Many city names of the Dacians were composed of an initial lexical element (often the tribe name) affixed to -dava, -daua, -deva, -deba, -daba or -dova (<PIE *dʰeh₁-, "to set, place").[1]

Most of these towns are attested by Ptolemy, and therefore date from the 1st century CE.

Therefore, dava 'town' derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European *dhewa 'settlement',.[2] The Zazaki dew, meaning "village" is found only in modern dialects and is not a cognate with the Dacian term. A pre-indo-european origin for the Dacian term is also possible, see comparison with Kartvelian *daba, 'town, village' [3]

The "dava" towns can be found as south as Sandanski and Plovdiv. Strabo specified that the Daci are the Getae. The Dacians, Getae and their kings were always considered as Thracians by the ancients (Dio Cassius, Trogus Pompeius, Appian, Strabo, Herodotus and Pliny the Elder), and were both said to speak the same Thracian language.

Davae in Dacia during Burebista

List of davae

Below is a list of Dacian towns which include various forms of dava in their name:

Onomastic range of the Dacian towns with the dava ending, covering Dacia, Moesia, Thrace and Dalmatia

See also

Notes
  1. Olteanu.
  2. Polome 1982, p. 886.
  3. Berzovan 2020.
  4. Grumeza 2009, p. 13.
  5. Velkov 1977, p. 92.
    • Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia. Edited by J. Haury; revised by G. Wirth. 3 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1976-64. Greek text.
  7. TSR9, Proc. 123. 26
  8. Grumeza 2009, p. 88.
  9. Grumeza 2009, p. 12.
  10. Grumeza 2009, p. 14.
  11. Ethnic continuity in the Carpatho-Danubian area by Elemér Illyés,1988,ISBN 0-88033-146-1,page 223
  12. Lepper, F. A. (1988). Trajan's Column: A New Edition of the Cichorius Plates. Alan Sutton. p. 138. Stuart Jones noted the Dacian - sounding place - name ' Thermidava ' on the Lissus Naissus road : but see Miller col . 557 , for the evidence on this. The place was most probably called ' Theranda ' and there is no evidence for any settlement there of pro-Roman Dacians now, nor is it very likely. (..) Most scholars , however , have supposed , as did Cichorius , that we are now north of the Danube , somewhere in the Banat area where the local inhabitants are frightened that they may lose their recently acquired 'liberty'.

References
  • Grumeza, Ion (2009). Dacia: Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe. Hamilton Books. ISBN 0-7618-4465-1.
  • Velkov, Velizar Iv (1977). The cities in Thrace and Dacia in late antiquity: (studies and materials). Hakkert. ISBN 90-256-0723-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Olteanu, Sorin. "Linguae Thraco-Daco-Moesorum - Toponyms Section". Linguae Thraco-Daco-Moesorum (in Romanian and English). Archived from the original on 3 January 2011. Retrieved 8 December 2010.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Polome, E. C. (1982). "20e". In Boardman, John (ed.). The Cambridge Ancient History. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-22496-3.
  • Tomaschek, Wilhelm (1883). "Les Restes de la langue dace". Le Muséon. Belgium: "Société des lettres et des sciences" Louvain, Belgium. 2.
  • Berzovan, Alexandru (2020). "Considerations regarding the origin of Dacian Term dava / deva / daba. A Historical and Linguistic Journey from the Lower Danube to Anatolia and Transcaucasia". The Thracians and their neighbours in antiquity. Archaeology and history. Studies in honor of Valeriu Sîrbu at his 70th anniversary. Romania: Editura Istros , Brăila.
  • Van den Gheyn, Joseph (1885). "Les populations Danubiennes". Revue des questions scientifiques. Brussels: Société scientifique de Bruxelles. 17–18.
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