Editing Dacian language (section)

====Dacia and Moesia: zone of toponyms ending in ''-dava''====
[[File:Teritoriul onomastic al elementului dava - Sorin Olteanu.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|Map of the geographical distribution of attested placenames with the ''-dava'' suffix, covering Dacia, Moesia, Thrace and Dalmatia, according to Olteanu (2010). The dava distribution confirms Dacia and Moesia as the zone of Dacian speech. The dava zone is, with few exceptions, consistent with Ptolemy's definition of Dacia's borders. There is no conclusive evidence that Dacian was a predominant language outside the dava zone in the 1st century AD. According to Strabo, the Thracians spoke the same language as the Dacians, in which case Dacian was spoken as far as the Aegean Sea and the [[Bosporus]]. But Strabo's view is controversial among modern linguists: dava placenames are absent south of the [[Balkan Mountains]], with one exception (see [[Dacian language#Relationship with ancient languages|Thracian]], below)]]

At the start of the Roman imperial era (30&nbsp;BC), the Dacian language was probably predominant in the ancient regions of [[Dacia]] and [[Moesia]] (although these regions probably contained several enclaves of Celtic and Germanic speakers). Strabo's statement that the Moesian people spoke the same language as the Dacians and Getae is consistent with the distribution of placenames, attested in Ptolemy's ''Geographia'', which carry the Dacian suffix ''-dava'' ("town" or "fort").

North of the Danube, the dava-zone is largely consistent with Ptolemy's definition of Dacia's borders (III.8.1–3) i.e. the area contained by the river ''Ister'' ([[Danube River|Danube]]) to the south, the river ''Thibiscum'' ([[Timiș River|Timiș]]) to the west, the upper river ''Tyras'' ([[Dniester river|Dniester]]) to the north and the river ''Hierasus'' ([[Siret River|Siret]]) to the east.{{sfn|Ptolemy|loc=III.8.1–3}} To the west, it appears that the ''-dava'' placenames in Olteanu's map lie within the line of the Timiş, extended northwards. However, four davas are located beyond the Siret, Ptolemy's eastern border. But three of these, ''Piroboridava'', ''Tamasidava'' and ''Zargidava'', are described by Ptolemy as ''pará'' (Gr."very close") to the Siret: ''Piroboridava'', the only one securely located, was 3&nbsp;km from the Siret.{{sfn|Barrington Atlas|2000|loc=Map 22}} The location of ''Clepidava'' is uncertain: Olteanu locates it in north-east [[Bessarabia]], but Georgiev places it further west, in south-west Ukraine, between the upper reaches of the Siret and Dniester rivers.{{sfn|Georgiev|1977|p=191 (map)}}

South of the Danube, a dialect of Dacian called ''Daco-Moesian'' was probably predominant in the region known to the Romans as Moesia, which was divided by them into the [[Roman provinces]] of [[Moesia Superior]] (roughly modern Serbia) and [[Moesia Inferior]] (modern northern Bulgaria as far as the Balkan range plus Roman [[Dobruja]] region). This is evidenced by the distribution of ''-dava'' placenames, which occur in the eastern half of Moesia Superior and all over Inferior.{{sfn|Georgiev|1977|p=191 map}} These regions were inhabited predominantly by tribes believed to have been Dacian-speaking, such as the [[Triballi]], [[Moesi]] and [[Getae]].

However, the dava-zone was not exclusively or uniformly Dacian-speaking during historical times. Significant Celtic elements survived there into the 2nd century AD: Ptolemy (III.8.3) lists two Celtic peoples, the [[Taurisci]] and [[Anartes]], as resident in the northernmost part of Dacia, in the northern Carpathians. The partly Celtic [[Bastarnae]] are also attested in this region in literature and the archaeological record during the 1st century BC; they probably remained in the 1st century AD, according to Batty.{{sfn|Batty|2007|p=378}}