Feeling that the previous article, on how I can help you with your misunderstandings or simply to better understand certain concepts you may be unfamiliar with, was incomplete, I added a few more clauses, mostly having to do with a money-back guarantee and also describing my first attempts at implementing the I'm from DACIA answer.

The guarantee is simple. To get any of my services, you would have to prepay. If you are not satisfied with what you are getting, you can ask for a refund within 48h of delivery and you will get it, within another 48h, in an amount varying from 80% to 120% of your payment, within my discretion. The refund is given based on how much I enjoyed that particular experience and also on my subjective appreciation of how entitled you would be to request a refund. At the low end of my subjective opinion, you would be receiving 80% of your payment, while at the high end you would be getting all your money back plus a bonus of 20%, out of my pocket.

The reasons why you would be getting the aforementioned services have to do more with testing your beliefs and opening your horizons rather than “winning” debates. As such, these services would not be suitable or useful for everyone, but rather for very few people. In general, those who are sufficiently open-minded to look for and request such services tend to also have already developed ways to regularly test their beliefs.

Some series on this blog where I point out other logical flaws can be found in

• Roma / antiziganism: l3st conjecture (I, II, III, IV, V, Vb, VI, VII), Poc-Rrrom, PiaR IV, mate, and the Roma category
• Homosexuality (in Romanian mostly): 4g, ursul, pasareii, Schlessinger
• Sexism:  ea/el category (meaning she/he in Romanian, see it listed at the bottom in the desktop version) – Zaida, Badea, Fumeile II, Mrrr, Sexism IV, Celibidache I & II, Buddha, sexualization, cultura
• Romania as Gypsy state: Romanistan I, II, III, IV (Moldova).

The illustration presented above is a “mix” of Zamolxis by Oculus as published on Deviant Art, the Game of Thrones Lannister pater familias and Decebal’s head sculpture as shown on Wikipedia. Somewhere in between there are a few dollar bills in a woman’s red lingerie.

Now that we got the guarantee out of the way, I can tell you how my first attempt at answering “where are you from” with “Dacia” went.

why

This should be obvious from the previous article, but here I’ll try again, one more time, baby. In summary, Dacians / Romanians are different from Roma / Gypsies, but labelling and stereotyping is wrong in itself. Here’s a few other stereotypes:

• Welsh / Kiwis – sheep “lovers” (this one is patently over-the-top, it needs no debunking)
• Germans – neo-Nazis or “good engineers / bad lovers” (I know a few who are the exact opposite)
• French – cheese-eating surrender monkeys who don’t shower (see 112 gripes) – this is obviously false
• Italians – fascist mama-boys, Mafiosi in the south and secessionists in the North – there are many exceptions
• Japanese – techno-niggaz and sushi-conspirators |–)

As a general rule, making negative generalizations is bad as it may victimize people who don’t conform to the stereotype. It is particularly annoying when negative stereotypes are piled onto someone who does not belong to that category – for instance, calling a person from Hong Kong [which is an urban, concrete jungle] “sheep lover” and expecting them to defend it and explain to you why they are not having sex with sheep. On the other hand, positive stereotypes may be a good conversation starter, as long as everybody knows that they [positive stereotypes] are not universal either.

What \ Who	Dacians (W)	Roma (W)
Undesirable Exonyms	Romanians, Wlachs, Vallachians	Gipsies, Gypsies, Zigeuner, Gitano, Cingane
Other Endonyms	Daco-Romans, Getae, Geto-Dacians	Romani, Romany, Roms, Rroms, Rromany, Kale, Romanichal, Sinti
Geography	space defined by the Carpathian mountains, and delimited by the Tisa river to the West, Nister (Nistru) / Prut / Siret to the East, Danube to the South and the Black Sea Coast in South East. Romania is a country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Bulgaria in the South, Serbia in the SW, Hungary in the NW and the Moldovan Republic (aka Bessarabia in Romania) in the East, the latter bordering Ukraine. The name “Romanian” was sporadically used after the year 1000.	originally from Northern India, they are found as a minority in most European countries as well as the Americas (since 1900s); some Roma have mixed with Irish Travellers, though the latter are probably more Gaelic than they are Indian. Together with the Mongol invasion, the first Romani had reached the territory of present day Romania around the year 1241. At the beginning of the 1300s when the Mongols withdrew from Eastern Europe the Romani who were left were taken as prisoners and slaves, owned by boyars and monasteries. According to documents signed by Prince Dan I the first captured Romani in Wallachia go back to year 1385. Romani people were liberated on February 20, 1856.
Formation	Romanians formed as a people when the Roman Empire conquered Dacia around 100 A.D. and absorbed the influence of surrounding and migratory people over the next few centuries. Though mentions of the name “Romania” and “Romanian” appear sporadically in medieval times, only in mid-1800s, in the revolutionary spirit that engulfed Europe and instigated by Italian revolutionaries who were seeking to restore the Roman Empire in a bid to reunite the main Italian states, did the local people adopt that name fully.	Arrived in Mid-West Asia, then Europe, (from India) at least 1,000 years ago, either separating from the Dom people or, at least, having a similar history; the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the sixth and eleventh century. Were subjected to heavy discrimination in Western Europe since their arrival, being hunted down and found some shelter in the East, where they were enslaved, as it happened to many peasants back then.
Language	Romanian is a Romance (based on Latin) language, similar to Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese	Romani language has many dialects and is considered an Indo-Aryan language with roots in Sanskrit. “Most of the Ciganos of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló, Angloromany, and Scandoromani.”
Famous people	Simona Halep, Gheorghe Hagi, Stefan Hell*, Mircea Eliade, Brancusi, Ceausescu, Nadia Comaneci, Vlad Tepes (Dracul), Emil Cioran, Gheorghe Zamfir, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Johnny Weismuller* (Tarzan), Herta Muller*, George Emil Palade, John DeLorean*	Elvis Presley, Andrea Pirlo, Joaquin Cortes, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Carlos Santana, Ricardo Quaresma, Charlie Chaplin [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8],  Cantona, Mother Teresa, Gogol Bordello, Gypsy Kings

* Some of the famous people ethnicity may not be that listed. In particular, Stefan Hell, one of the three 2014 Nobel prize winners for Chemistry, is an ethnic German who was recognized mostly for the work done in Germany. He nonetheless credits his Romanian education for part of his win. Johnny Weismuller, the original Tarzan, was also born in Romania but was most likely an ethnic German and became famous in Hollywood, USA. Herta Muller is an ethnic German who won the Nobel prize for Literature in Germany, mostly for writing about her experiences in Romania. John DeLorean is the least Romanian of all, as he was born to a Romanian father and an Austrian mother in USA; his father divorced his mother and became an alcoholic, after having worked in the auto industry.

As explained in the second instalment of the Romanistan series – conspiracy, it seems as if Romanian Roma are neither the largest Gipsy minority in Europe in terms of number of people, nor in terms of percentage, but are presented as such, for obscure reasons, even in the Economist. In my experience, most people, including Europeans, are not particularly cognizant of their own history (never mind “US Americans” and people from other continents), so explaining all these facts, apart from being rather difficult and quite boring for me, is bound to be wasted time. For my part, I outlined my belief that Romania should change its name in Dacia to avoid such confusions, but it seems that even some more enlightened bloggers don’t quite agree.

how

..it all went the first time I tried this answer.

1. I first tried it with some dude, and his eyes grew bigger and told me he didn’t know what or where that is. He then asked me if it’s in Europe.
2. The second attempt went with a girl whose eyes were already quite large so if they became bigger, I could not really tell. She eventually started googling it on her phone and ended up asking me about Romania, at which point I said yes. I tried talking about something else, but they were very keen on figuring out where I’m from.
3. The 3rd time was with another girl and her eyes were bigger than Betty Boop’s. She objected to me not telling her anything about myself, especially after she told me both her age and her home country. I didn’t tell her that, but thought she’d have a chance suing me in the International Court of Conversational Fairness.

An improvement is needed: I’ll probably claim “Dacian-Canadian” ancestry as that best describes how I currently feel about who I am. I was born in Dacia, but am mostly Canadian. And further questions about Dacia could be easily and truthfully be set aside with “I haven’t lived there for more than two decades”

And if they still insist, I would tell them that I did some research on this country and wrote it down in a blog, do you want the address? This one’s http://j.mp/getodac or http://d0t.ro/getodac.

I still hope that Romania will one day change its name into Dacia, but unlike my guarantee (which is rock solid), that wish will most likely be fulfilled only at Kalendas Graecas.

Sources / More info: Dacian