Romania (formerly also spelled Rumania or Roumania; Romanian: Romania) is a country in Europe. It is bordered by Ukraine and Moldova in the northeast; Hungary in the west; Serbia and Bulgaria to the south along the Danube River. Romania has a stretch of sea coast on the Black Sea and the eastern and southern Carpathian mountains run through its centre. Since the mid-20th century, Romania has become the dominant regional influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological and cultural affairs. Romania has been a member of NATO since 2004, and is also an acceding country to the European Union. The EU Accesion Treaty was signed in early 2005, and Romania is due to join the Union on January 1, 2007.



Name
The name of Romania (Romania) comes from Roman (Romanian) which is a derivative of the word Romanus ("Roman") from Latin.
The oldest surviving document written in the Romanian language is a 1521 letter which notifies the mayor of Brasov about the imminent attack of the Ottoman Turks. This document is also notable for having the first occurrence of "Rumanian", Wallachia being here named The Rumanian Land - Teara Rumaneasca (teara < Latin Terra = land). In the following centuries, Romanian documents use both forms: Roman and Ruman, with the latter being the more common form. It was only in the 19th century, with the rise of nationalism that the form Roman was adopted as an official spelling, being chosen over Ruman in order to emphasise the linguistic connection to ancient Rome.
Romanians take pride in being the most eastern Romance people, completely surrounded by non-Latin peoples ("an island of Latinity").