One of the interesting things about the Romanian language is that is has two words for “kiss” (either the noun or the verb), both of them coming from Latin, yet having two very distinct meanings.

The first one – pup – comes from the Latin word for kissing someone, now only surviving in Italian (mostly in colorful phrases I won’t detail here) and Romanian.

The second one – sarut – comes from the Latin word for greeting someone, similar to the English word “salutations”.

The interesting thing is that in Romanian, un pup is the “greetings” kiss and un sarut is the “romantic” kiss.

If you’re kissing your husband, wife or girlfriend then the noun (and related verb) to use is sarut.

Traditionally, Romanians end conversations with people (they are close to) with the pup kiss. In my book (and here on the site) I refer to it as the “Euro kiss”.

Romanians are also fond of saying “I kiss you” which is usually either “te pup” (for singular, “familiar” you) or “va pup” (I kiss “you” plural).

Emails, “old fashioned” letters and other written communications between people who are close to one another end in “te/va pup” as well.

It is essential to understand that you only pup people you are on close terms with and never, ever use it in “formal” situations.

Likewise, it’s usually not a good idea to lay un sarut on someone you don’t know well :P

AND NOW YOU KNOW!