Dacia

A Romanian car company. They are based on the French Renault and are notoriously weak, small cars. Since Dacia spent most of its lifetime under a communist regime, there have been very few improvements to the car over the years.

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I understand that during the 70s or the 80s, the Chinesebought 100 Dacias from Romania. The deal was that they would start heavy trading with another communist country. One of the tests was taking all the doors off, putting them into a pile and then putting them back. Wouldn't you know it, none of the doors fit back on?

Q: What do you call a Dacia on top of a hill?
A: A miracle

Q: What do you call two Dacias on top of a hill?
A: Science Fiction.

Q: What do you call three Dacias on top of a hill?
A: A stupid place to put a factory

Q: What's the maximum accelaration of a Dacia?
A: 9.8 meters per second squared.

Q: How do you find parts for a Dacia?
A: Follow another one

Q: Why does the Dacia have 4 pedals?
A: One is the clutch. One is the brake. One is the gas. One is for inflating the air bag.

Q: What's the difference between a Dacia and a Jehova's Witness?
A: You can close the door on a Jehova's Witness

A Dacia is good, a car is even better!

The name Dacia originally refers to the Roman province that covered approximately present-day Romania. The emperor Trajan conquered the area, inhabited by a people called Daci (whom the Greeks called Getae) and set up a province of Dacia in 106*. It was occupied by the Goths in the late third century and passed out of the Roman sphere.

The modern Romanian pronunciation of the word would be DAH-cha.

* /me screams at getting three different dates (105, 106, and 107) from three different normally reliable on-line sources.

/me then thanks Gone Jackal for being smarter than the bunch of them put together. The Second Dacian War lasted from 105 to 107, but the official incorporation of the province took place in 106.

(ed. note: For more about the Gothic world during the later ages of the Roman Empire read: The Origin and Deeds of The Goths by Jordanes, translated by Charles C. Mierow. http://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html)

From some indeterminate time in the early middle ages, the Latin name Dacia came to refer to Denmark (while still being used to refer to the Roman province, as well). Nobody seems to be exactly certain when this began, but Dudo certainly refers to "the Dacian tongue" spoken by the northmen. The general consensus among scholars is that this confusion was caused by the fact that Dacia-the-Roman-province was familiar to the mediaeval geographers, while Denmark was not - one imagines them frantically trying to figure out who these strange raiders were, and where they came from. A more correct Latin form of Danmark would be Dania, but this never really caught on.

Runic alphabets were also unfamiliar, and often misidentified as Syriac or Chaldean by mystified scholars of the time.