On the Terminology of Funerals: Eastern Romance Designations of Koliva

Abstract

A ritual dish of boiled grains is an important attribute of funeral meals among all Eastern Romance peoples. Such a dish is also used in the funeral and memorial ceremonies of the Slavs, primarily those of the southern and eastern Slavic peoples. Moreover, both Eastern Romance groups and Slavs have a ritual preparation and consumption of koliva on certain calendar holidays. The most common in the area where speakers of various dialects of the Daco-Romanian language live are the Greekism colivă (with phonetic variations) and the term of Latin origin grâu (‘wheat’, ‘grain’), which, as the name of a funeral dish, is possibly a calque from the South Slavic terms жито and пченица. It is worth noting the almost exclusive prevalence of the term colivă and similar terms in the territory of eastern and southern Romania (Romanian Moldova, Dobrogea, Muntenia, most of Oltenia), as well as the Republic of Moldova. A similar designation of koliva is also prevalent among the speakers of the Oltenian dialects of the Romanian language, living in eastern Serbia and northwestern Bulgaria. The Aromanians have names of both types, although names with the internal form ‘wheat’, ‘grain’ are more common. The names of the second type are common in Romania's central (central and southern Transylvania), southwestern (Banat), and northeastern (Bukovina) regions. However, the names of the first type are also found in all of these regions. Other, less common designations for koliva are also mostly originally Greekisms – such as the term cutie / сuсie, which is common in western Romania – in Banat and southern Transylvania, as well as the terms părăstaş and panahidă.  The terms părăstaş and panahidă, noted as names of koliva by the authors of the Minor Romanian Linguistic Atlas of 1940, should perhaps be considered occasionalisms.

Funding

This research was funded by the Russian Science Foundation, grant No. 22-18-00484-П,

 https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00484/.

Received 4 December 2025

Revised 22 December 2025

Accepted 25 April 2026

For citation: Golant, N. G., 2026. On the Terminology of Funerals: Eastern Romance Designations of Koliva. Slavic World in the Third Millennium, 21 (1–2), pp. 227–248. https://doi.org/10.31168/2412-6446.2026.21.1-2.13