
Romania
Country Name
Romania.
Location
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
It shares land borders with Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, and Moldova to the east and has its opening to the Black Sea.
Capital
Bucharest.
Reason For Naming the country
Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning "citizen of Rome".
Two spelling forms: român and rumân were used interchangeably until sociolinguistic developments in the late 17th century led to grammatical differentiation of the two forms: rumân came to mean "bondsman", while român retained the original ethnolinguistic meaning.
The use of the name Romania to refer to the common homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century.
In English, the name of the country was formerly spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975.
Romania is also the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. A few of other languages (including Italian, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Norwegian) have also switched to "o" like English, but most languages continue to prefer forms with u, e.g. French Roumanie, German and Swedish Rumänien, Spanish Rumania (the archaic form Rumanía is still in use in Spain), Polish Rumunia, Russian Румыния (Rumyniya), and Japanese ルーマニア (Rūmania).
Flag
The current Flag of Romania was adopted on 27 December 1989.
The first use of the Romanian flag was on 24 April 1867.
The flag consists of three equal vertical stripes of Blue, Yellow, and Red.
Like many other nations, Romania’s national flag is of a basic tricolor design.
However, even though the design is simplistic, there is significant symbolism
behind the colors chosen for the flag. The use of these colors date back to the
The Wallachian uprising in 1821. During this time, it was determined that the
colors used in what would one day be adopted as Romania’s national flag
represented liberty, justice, and fraternity.
Blue color represents liberty, the yellow color symbolizes justice, while the Red
represents the union of the nation.
Flag Facts:
- Romania’s flag is similar to the civil flag of Andorra.
- The flag is also very similar to the flag of Chad, except that the shades of blue are different. Chad asked the United Nations to look into the issue back in 2004, but no changes were made.
- The tricolor of Romania's flag is identical to the flag of Moldova.
Religion
Romania is a secular state and has no state religion.
The majority of the population identify themselves as Christians, the major is identified as Orthodox Christians belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church.
The second group is Protestants make up 6% of the total population, Protestant groups include; Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, and Lutheran churches among others.
Other denominations include Roman Catholicism (4.3%), and Greek Catholicism (0.8%).
The freedom of worship is protected by the Romanian. Other religions in the country are Islam, Judaism, and Other Beliefs and makeup 8.0% of the population.
Language
The only official language of the country is Romanian, which belongs to a Romance language family.
Romanian is spoken as a first language by approximately 90% of the entire population,
the most widely spoken minority language is Hungarian, Approximately 6.7% of the population speaks this language, the majority of which live in Transylvania, Hungarian is used in some local-level public offices of Romania.
In addition to Hungarian, several other minority languages are spoken throughout the country as, Romani is used in local government administrative offices, including the educational system, throughout 79 cities and in 1 town.
Other minority languages include Ukrainian, German, Russian, Turkish, and Tatar.
There are several foreign languages in Romania such as; English and French.
English is the primary foreign language taught in the public school system, from primary to upper secondary grade levels.
English is followed closely by the French language, which is spoken by 24% of the population, this is the second most popular foreign language class in the public school system. Romania is noted as having the largest number of French learners in a non-French speaking country.
Other less common foreign languages within Romania are Italian, and German.
Currency
Romanian leu (RON)
Time Zone
+03:00 GMT. (Summer Time)
+02:00 GMT.
Government Regime
Unitary semi-presidential republic.
Climate
Romania, has generally a continental climate, with cold winters and hot summers.
The Black Sea coast has a slightly milder climate, but not by much since it often receives air masses coming from inland.
Winter, from December to February, is cold throughout Romania. Snowfall is quite common, but not abundant; in inland plains, there are about thirty days with snowfall per year. In Bucharest, the ground is often covered with snow. During winter, temperatures are fairly uniform across the continental region and decrease mainly with increasing altitude. In the main cities located around sea level, the average daily temperature in January hovers between 0 °C (32 °F) and -2 °C (28.5 °F).
Summer, from June to August, is quite warm in the north highs are around 26 °C (79 °F), while in Iasi, near the border with Moldova, they are around 28 °C (82 °F).
Bucharest is warmer, and it's often hot: the maximum temperatures in July and August are 30 °C (86 °F) on average, and they quite easily reach 35 °C (95 °F) and even more. Sometimes, however, it can get hot even in the northern plains and hills.
Along the coast of the Black Sea, the weather in summer is nice and pleasantly warm, sometimes even hot, but tempered by the breeze.
Summer is a fairly rainy season, mainly because of afternoon thunderstorms, which occur especially in May and July, and are most frequent and abundant in the mountains. Sometimes, these thunderstorms are so strong that they can cause floods.
The best time to visit Romania is from May to September.
International Phone Code
+40
Internet Code
.ro