Gheorghe Constantin Roja

Gheorghe Constantin Roja (1786 – 12 February 1847) was an Aromanian doctor, philologist, and historian.

Roja was born in 1786 in Bitola in the Ottoman Empire (now in North Macedonia),[1] then a town with a significant Aromanian population.

During his stay in Pest, he met Petru Maior, the censor of Romanian-language books printed at the University of Pest's typography, who helped him publish in 1808 his main work: Untersuchungen über die Romanier oder sogennanten Wlachen, welche jenseits der Donau wohnen (Studies about the Romanians or so-called Vlachs, which live beyond the Danube).

In his 1808 Studies, he promoted the idea of a common origin between the Aromanians and the Romanians and their use of a common literary language, and rejected the use of the term Vlachs, which he deemed as only a synonym for shepherds in Slavic languages.

For this purpose, he published Măestria ghiovăsirii românești in 1809, where he reiterated his ideas in both Greek and Romanian.