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Romania, republic, southeastern Europe, bounded on the north by Ukraine; on the east by Moldova; on the southeast by the Black Sea; on the south by Bulgaria; on the southwest by Serbia (part of the federation of Serbia and Montenegro); and on the west by Hungary. The total area of Romania is about 237,500 sq. km (about 91,700 sq. mi).

Lyrics: Andrei Muresanu; Music: Anton Pann.

The lyrics of the national anthem belong to Andrei Muresan (1816-1863), a romantic poet, journalist, translator, a genuine tribune of the times marked by the 1848 Revolution. The music was composed by Anton Pann (1796-1854), a poet and ethnographer, a man of great culture, a singer and author of music textbooks. Andrei Muresan’s poem "Un rasunet", written and published during the 1848 Revolution, found the adequate music within a few days, as the anthem was sung for the first time on June 29, 1848 at Ramnicu Valcea (in Wallachia the revolution had broken out on June 11). The poem became an anthem under the title "Desteapta-te romane" ("Awake, Ye, Romanian") and spontaneously earned recognition owing to its energetic and mobilising message. Since 1848 "Desteapta-te romane" has been a song dear to the Romanians, giving them courage in the crucial moments, during the Independence War (1877-1878), just as during World War I.

Romania is roughly oval in shape, with a maximum extent east to west of about 740 km (about 460 mi) and north to south about 475 km (about 295 mi). The topography is varied. The Transylvanian Basin, or Plateau, which occupies central Romania, is very hilly for the most part, but also has wide valleys and extensive arable slopes. It is almost completely surrounded by mountains. The Carpathian Mountains enclose it on the north and east. Moldoveanul (2543 m/8343 ft), the highest peak in the country, is in the Transylvanian Alps, to the south, which continues south to the Danube gorge as the Banat Mountains. A smaller group of ranges, the Bihor Mountains, is west of the basin. The remaining areas of Romania are predominantly lowlands. In the west are the lowlands of the Tisza Plain, which are usually referred to as the Banat, adjacent to the Serbian border, and Crisana-Maramures, adjacent to Hungary. The most extensive plains are the lowlands of Walachia, located between the Transylvanian Alps and Bulgaria, and of Moldova, east of the Carpathian Mountains. Bordering the Black Sea in the extreme east and forming part of Dobruja, or Dobrogea, is a low plateau, which continues south into Bulgaria.

The territory that is modern Romania first appeared in history as the greater part of the Roman province of Dacia, conquered by Emperor Trajan about AD 106. Most of its inhabitants, known as the Daci, had originally emigrated from Thrace in northern Greece. Roman colonists were sent into the province, and Rome developed the area considerably, building roads, bridges, and a great wall, its ruins still visible, from the present Black Sea port of Constanta across the Dobruja (Dobrogea) region to the Danube River. During the 3rd century AD, raids by the Goths became so grave a menace that the Roman legions were withdrawn across the Danube. While successive waves of invaders, including Goths, Huns, Slavs, and Bulgars, made Dacia a battleground, the Romanized population preserved a Latin speech and identity.

In the opinion of a Bulgarian ethnographer, Vl. Gheorghiev, the name 'DACI' come from 'Daos' which means 'Wolf'.  But, the Romanian academician C. Daicoviciu, believed that this name derives from the word “Daca” which could be interpreted as 'Knife'. In my opinion the first theory is the most credible because they had as war flag a dragon with a wolf’s head that also appears on the Traian’s Column. An interesting thing about this flag is that it was constructed in such way that whatever the wind blew, the war flag made a terrible noise like the yowl of wolfs.

The region has been periodically devastated for more than a millennium by the migratory waves known to Europe. But they came and left, and the Romanian people are still here. Members of the orthodox church, Romanian lived in 3 region adjoining, independent principalities, from the Middle Ages to modern times, Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. Despite their location at the crossroads between the large conquering empires - the ottoman empire, Czarist Russia and Habsburg Empire - Romanians managed to preserve their national identity, faith and civilization, at a time when neighboring kingdoms like Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Poland were being wiped off of the map of Europe. Later, in spite of the hostility and open opposition of these great nations, we managed to achieve our national unity in 1859; a long struggle eventually completed in 1918. The ensuing two decades of economic, political and cultural advances were cut short soon after the outbreak of the World War II, in 1940, when a third of the country's area and population was lost. In 194, after 4 years of war, the forcible imposition of a communist regime cut short Romania's democratic tradition. From 1881 until 1947 Romania had been a kingdom, ruled by the Hohenzollerns, a dynasty of German origin. On December 30th, 1947, the ruling monarch, King Mihai I was expelled and the monarchy was abolished in a communist coup. During 1960-1968, Romanians' hopes were dispelled by the power of the most oppressive and absurd totalitarian regime - that of Nicolae Ceausescu. The people's revolt of December 1989 ended the historic vacuum in which Romania had lived for 4 years. The first democratic elections were held in 1992.

Romanian Language, Romance language derived mainly from the Latin spoken in the ancient Roman province of Dacia. Romanian has four principal dialects. Daco-Romanian, or Romanian proper, is spoken by about 22 million people in Romania, in parts of Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Hungary and in Moldova. Macedo-Romanian, or Aromanian, has several hundred thousand speakers in various Balkan countries. Only a few thousand people still speak Megleno-Romanian, or Meglenitic, in Greece northwest of Thessaloníki, and Istro-Romanian, on the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia. These dialects are classified by some linguists as independent languages.
The Romanian literary language is based on the Daco-Romanian of the historic region of Walachia, in southern Romania. Romanian preserves some Latin traits lost in other Romance languages, notably the inflection of nouns. Like other non-Romance Balkan languages, it places the definite article after the noun. It has absorbed an unusually large number of Slavic, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, and Albanian words.

The official language is Romanian, a Latin-related language belonging to the same family as Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Germans and Hungarians speak their own ethnic languages, and the Roma speak Romany, an Indo-Aryan language, as well as various local dialects.
 

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The population of Romania (1993 estimate) was 23,157,000. Population density was about 98 persons per sq. km (about 253 per sq. mi). The population was about 45% rural.In 1992, Romania's population stood at 22,760,000, making it the second largest country after Poland in Central Europe.

Ethnic Romanians account for 89.4% of the population. The primary religions practiced are Orthodox (86.8%) and Roman Catholic (5.0%). The country's official language is Romanian. English, French and German are widely spoken.