Theodor Capidan

Theodor Capidan (April 28 [O.S. April 15] 1879–September 1, 1953) was an Ottoman-born Romanian linguist. An ethnic Aromanian from the Macedonia region, he studied at Leipzig before teaching school at Thessaloniki. Following the creation of Greater Romania at the end of World War I, Capidan followed his friend Sextil Pușcariu to the Transylvanian capital Cluj, where he spent nearly two decades, the most productive part of his career. He then taught in Bucharest for a further ten years and was marginalized late in life under the nascent communist regime. Capidan's major contributions involve studies of the Aromanians and the Megleno-Romanians, as well as their respective languages. His research extended to reciprocal influences between Romanian and the surrounding Slavic languages, the Eastern Romance substratum and the Balkan sprachbund, as well as toponymy. He made a significant contribution to projects for a Romanian-language dictionary and atlas.

He was born into an Aromanian family in Prilep, a town that formed part of the Ottoman Empire's Manastir Vilayet and is now in the Republic of Macedonia. His parents were the tailor Teohari Capidan and his wife Eugenia Vreta. After attending primary school in his native town, he followed his elder brother Pericle, a future painter, in emigrating to the Romanian Old Kingdom. Slated to become a Romanian Orthodox priest, he studied at the central seminary in Bucharest, but decided he had a different vocation and left in order to pursue a teaching career. Capidan returned to Macedonia, where he was hired at the Romanian high school in Bitola and displayed talent in teaching Romanian and German. With the help of the Romanian consul, he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to study Romance philology at Leipzig University from 1904 to 1908. His professors included Karl Brugmann, Gustav Weigand, August Leskien, Eduard Sievers and Wilhelm Wundt. His thesis, awarded cum laude, dealt with Aromanian linguistics. While a student, Capidan published his first works on Aromanian dialectology and cultural history. After graduating and until 1909, he served as assistant at Weigand's Balkan Institute. In 1907, he met and began a lifelong friendship with Sextil Pușcariu, who, after putting him through a three-month trial period in Czernowitz, invited the student to help with his Romanian-language dictionary project.

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