The Etymology and Semantics of the Ethnic Name Csángó

In this study, we approach the ethnonym Csángó, used to refer to the Hungarians living in Moldavia.We highlight the most important aspects of Hungarian linguists’ approach to the semantics of the name Csángó, and we take a look at the Romanian specialized literature in the field. We aim to offer some innovative semantic and etymological pathways, though we are aware that the etymology and the meaning of the name itself will still stay a disputed and open question of the research. We do not intend to cover the history of the Csángó community, nevertheless we attempt to recover some aspects of the semantics of their name, taking into account its etymology and performing a semantic feature analysis to help bring to the foreground semantic aspects not captured so far.