Calar

Calar is a historical Romanian term that denotes a horseman or cavalryman. It derives from cal, horse, with the agent-noun suffix -ar, and was used to refer to a rider serving in mounted troops. In medieval and early modern Romania, calars were members of cavalry units and appear in military and administrative texts of the period.

The term has influenced geography and onomastics in Romanian-speaking areas. The best-known toponym is Călărași, the name of a county in Romania and its capital city, literally meaning “place of horsemen.” Other place names in the region reflect the same root, indicating a landscape historically organized around horsemanship and mobility. Surnames and nicknames derived from the occupation or status of a rider are attested in Romanian sources, including forms that appear without diacritics in older records.

In contemporary Romanian, calar is rarely used outside historical or literary contexts. More common terms for the concept of a rider or horsemanship are călăreț (horseman/rider) and călărie (horsemanship). The non-diacritic spelling calar appears in some non-native texts or older documents, but the standard Romanian forms use the diacritics.