01 / 9
A page of an atlas
The title reads: 'Names for izvara made from cheese whey'. Each colour is a name, collected by dialectologists from speakers and generalised by the editors into an area. S1
Bulgarian Dialect Atlas · plate L25
Where the Balkans call it urda
One plate of the Bulgarian dialect atlas maps, village by village, what people call the cheese made from whey. The cheese has five names. One of them is the word Romanians use: urda colours four tenths of the map, most of the west and south.
Take the plate apartBefore the map
What's in the pot
Urda is not made from milk but from what is left after cheese. The whey goes back on the fire.
The proteins that did not go into the curd set with the heat. A white matter appears on the surface, in flakes. When the whey comes to the boil, the pot comes off the fire and the flakes drain in a cloth for a few hours. S7
The description follows the FAO recipe for requesón, a whey cheese of the same family as ricotta. The whey and the pace vary from one sheepfold to the next.
or hold down the Space key
Across the Balkans, that same pot got several names. The atlas collected all of them.
02 / 9
Five names, five colours
The printer put each name on its own colour. Here the layers are separated from the scan, pixel by pixel, like sheets of tracing paper lifted off the page. S1
03 / 9
извара · izvara
The widest layer: the north and east, from Vidin to the Black Sea. The atlas notes beside it 'срв. стб. варити', Old Church Slavonic 'to boil'. The name comes from 'to boil'. The letters А, Б, В mark the variants odvara, podvara, izvarka, scattered in the south and south-west too. S1
04 / 9
урда · urda
The second layer, almost as large: the west and south, from Niš and Skopje to the Rhodopes, Thrace and Strandzha, plus a patch near Silistra. Here whey cheese carries the name Romanians use. S1
05 / 9
ишумик · išumik
Blue patches in Thrace, near Sliven and Edirne, and one on the Danube east of Silistra. The name is Turkish: ikşimik, related to the adjective eksi, 'sour'. The source that explains it glosses it as curd made from milk, not whey. S8
06 / 9
влашик · vlašik
Three yellow islands in south-eastern Thrace. In Bulgarian, влах means Vlach, a Romanian or Aromanian. The sources read here do not say whether the cheese's name comes from that, so neither do we. S1
07 / 9
нор · nor
Along the Maritsa, then in eastern Thrace and in Asia Minor, on the small map in the corner. The sources read here do not explain the name. S1
08 / 9
Н · not here
The letter Н marks places where the product is not made, so it has no name. The plate also carries a few X marks that the legend does not explain. S1
09 / 9
Put the sheets back
Put back together, the plate shows a border that no political map has: the line where people stop saying izvara and start saying urda. S1
Your map
Touch a place
Tap anywhere on the map to see which name the atlas found there. You can switch each layer on and off.
Tap the map.
The layers are read automatically from the scan's colours. At borders and under labels they can be a few pixels off; the original scan is always one click away.
Past the edge of the plate
The word crosses the mountains
Urda does not stop at the atlas's border. The same word, lightly changed, turns up from the Pindus to the Tatras and the Russian steppe.
The DER and DRAM dictionaries and a study by Manuela Nevaci say that the Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian and Greek forms come from Romanian. The linguist Grigore Brâncuș suggested that Romanian shepherds carried them. The map below shows only where the forms are. Arrows would be a hypothesis, so there are none. Modern Polish keeps horda only as "horde", a different word. S2 S3 S4
- Romanian urdă
- Aromanian úrdă
- Megleno-Romanian urdă
- Bulgarian, Rhodopes урда · хурда · вурда
- Albanian urdhë · udhos
- dialectal Greek ούρδα
- Serbian урда · вурда
- Slovene urda
- Hungarian orda · urda
- Slovak urda
- Czech urda
- Polish, historical form horda
- Ukrainian урда
- Russian урда
- Turkish urda
Where it comes from
Nobody knows, though many have tried
The main Romanian dictionary says it in two words: etymology unknown. Behind them lie well over a century of hypotheses. S2
- 1939Scriban
From Latin horrida, the way Turda would come from torrida. S2
- 1974Duridanov
A Dacian word, *skurda, from a root meaning 'to cut'. S4
- 1981Russu
Native, from *ur-d-, 'to boil, to bubble'. S2
- 1983Brâncuș
From *(h)urde, 'sour'; perhaps carried by Romanian shepherds into neighbouring languages. S4
- 1983 · 2006Poghirc · Paliga
A native word from the old languages of the Balkans. S4
- 1994Moskov
Turkic parallels, linked to the sense 'dried'. S4
- 1958–1966Ciorănescu (DER)
Perhaps from Turkish hurde, 'dregs, remainder', but 'the sound shape is unclear'. S2
Two things are certain. It is a shepherds' word, and in Romanian it is a general word, not a regional one. The direction it travelled, its origin and its age remain open. S2 S3
How to read the plate
A map has a point of view too
The atlas draws the Bulgarian dialects as its authors defined them, including territory that today belongs to North Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Albania and Turkey. What the languages there should be called is a political dispute. The plate shows the atlas's view; this page reproduces it without adopting it.
The colours are generalisations: the editors joined answers from villages into areas. The shares on this page are measured on the coloured surface of the printed plate, not on population.
The atlas also has a second map, L26, for curd (извара) made straight from milk. One name can cover two products, which is why the recipe is checked before the word. S8
Next time you ask for urdă at a Romanian market, you are saying a word that a shepherd in the Rhodopes, one in the Pindus and one in the Tatras would understand. Nobody knows who said it first.
Sources
What I read
- S1
Български диалектен атлас. Обобщаващ том I–III. Фонетика, акцентология, лексика
Institutul pentru Limba Bulgară, Academia Bulgară de Științe / Institute for Bulgarian Language, BAS · 2001
Plate L25, p. 419, scale 1:3,000,000: 'Names for izvara made from cheese whey'. Legend, colours, the letters А, Б, В, Н and the note 'срв. стб. варити' are read directly from the scan.
Open the source ↗ - S2
urdă: DEX, MDA2, DER (Ciorănescu), DRAM, Scriban, CADE, Șăineanu
dexonline · 1929–2015
DEX: etymology unknown. MDA2: probably native, cf. Albanian udhós; first source ANON. CAR. DER: uncertain, perhaps Turkish hurde, 'the sound shape is unclear'; the Hungarian, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovene, Ruthenian, Czech, Polish and Russian forms come from Romanian. DRAM: native, from *ur-d- 'to boil' (Russu). Scriban: from Latin horrida. CADE: a shepherds' word that entered the languages of every people the shepherds met.
Open the source ↗ - S3
Graiurile aromânești din Peninsula Balcanică. Situația actuală
Manuela Nevaci, Fonetică și dialectologie XXXII, pp. 109–110 · 2013
Aromanian úrdă is general across Aromanian; Albanian urdhë is a dialect word, perhaps reinforced by Aromanian. Note 23 derives Greek ούρδα and the Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovene, Ruthenian, Czech and Polish (horda) forms from Romanian.
Open the source ↗ - S4
Общобалканска и палеобалканска лексика в българския език
Albena Mircheva, volumul IBE 2019, p. 119 · 2019
Forms: Bulgarian dialect (Rhodopes) урда, хурда, вурда; Romanian urdă; Albanian udhos, hurdë; dialectal Greek ούρδα; Serbian урда/вурда; Czech and Slovak urda; Polish horda; Ukrainian and Russian урда; Hungarian orda, urda; Turkish urda. Hypotheses: Duridanov (Dacian *skurda), Moskov (Turkic), Poghirc and Paliga (Paleo-Balkan), Brâncuș (*(h)urde 'sour', carried by Romanian shepherds into neighbouring languages), Orel (Albanian udhos from the verb hudh).
Open the source ↗ - S5
Din terminologia brânzeturilor românești
Mihaela Marin, pp. 514–517 · 2015
p. 515: 'Urdă – (1550), cf. DOR', a dictionary of personal names. p. 517: 'Bărbănţe de urdă' (1650). p. 514: urdă among the 'native elements'.
Open the source ↗ - S6
Dicționar onomastic românesc (DOR), intrarea URDĂ
N. A. Constantinescu, via dexonline · 1963
'URDĂ subst. 1. – Mihul (16 A II 82).' A man called Urdă, in a sixteenth-century document.
Open the source ↗ - S7
The technology of traditional milk products in developing countries, 3.22 Requesón
FAO · 1990
Requesón 'belongs to the family of cheese made from whey including Ricotta'. As the whey heats, 'a whitish matter appears on its surface', mainly heat-coagulated albumin; once it begins to boil it comes off the fire and drains in a cloth for 4–6 hours.
Open the source ↗ - S8
За славянската, балканската и националната специфика на кулинарната лексика в българските диалекти
Margarita Koteva, Institutul pentru Limba Bulgară · 2022
'ишумик … from Turkish ikşimik, Turkish adjective ekşi "sour"' (after the Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary). Also: the atlas's map L26 is 'izvara made from milk'.
Open the source ↗
What changed since the August edition: 1550 is no longer presented as the cheese's first attestation (it is a man's name), and the map layers are now extracted from the scan.