The oldest securely documented Byzantine Greek loanword in Romanian is agonisi, meaning "to acquire through effort, to gain by hard work, to save."

Etymology

From Byzantine Greek verb ἀγωνίζομαι (to struggle, fight, compete). The Romanian form derives from the aorist sigmatic: ἠγωνισάμην → agonisi. See sapovici-note-etimologice.

First Attestation

First attested in the early 16th century, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (a psalter manuscript). This makes it one of the earliest Greek-origin borrowings in written Romanian, predating the phanariot-period (1711–1821) by approximately two centuries.

Semantic Evolution

Unlike most Phanariot-era borrowings, agonisi retained its neutral/stylistic mark through the centuries. As sapovici-note-etimologice notes:

"Unlike many Phanariot-era borrowings, agonisi retained its neutral/stylistic mark."

This is notable because stylistic-depreciation affected most Greek borrowings — words that were neutral or prestige borrowings during the phanariot-period became pejorative or colloquial in modern Romanian, as documented in sapovici-soarta-imprumuturilor and sapovici-mic-glosar-expresive.

Broader Context: Pre-Phanariot Greek Contact

agonisi entered Romanian via commercial Byzantine-Greek contact, possibly as early as the 10th–12th century — though the documentary evidence begins only with the 16th-century psalter. This aligns with the three-period framework in sapovici-outcome-greek-loanwords:

  1. Old Greek via Latin (inherited substrate)
  2. Medieval Greek / Byzantine Greek (medieval Balkan contact — where agonisi belongs)
  3. Neo-Greek / Phanariot (16th–19th century)

agonisi is thus a bridge word — a medieval Greek commercial term that survived into the Phanariot era and persisted into modern Romanian without the stigma that attached to later borrowings.

Comparison with Other Early Borrowings

Other Greek-origin words documented in early Romanian texts include:

  • paragină — from Neo-Greek παραγίνομαι ("to be present, to arrive"), Romanian meaning shifted to "uncultivated land, wasteland." Etymology listed as uncertain in DLR; Sapovici proposes Greek derivation. See sapovici-note-etimologice.

  • soi/soios — from Turkish soy via Greek intermediary; appears in later texts with positive meaning ("noble breed") that later degraded to pejorative. See sapovici-genealogia-soi.

Conclusion

agonisi stands as the oldest documented Byzantine Greek loanword in Romanian by attestation date, with a clear etymology and semantic history. Its resistance to the stylistic-depreciation that affected most Phanariot borrowings makes it an exception that illuminates the rule — most Greek-origin vocabulary in modern Romanian bears the mark of the 1821 political rupture that ended Phanariot rule, while agonisi represents the older, more stable layer of Greek-Romanian commercial contact.

Sources: sapovici-note-etimologice, byzantine-greek-vocabulary, sapovici-outcome-greek-loanwords, sapovici-soarta-imprumuturilor, sapovici-mic-glosar-expresive, stylistic-depreciation, phanariot-period, sapovici-genealogia-soi