ScutelnicScutelnic (also scutnic, from Romanian

Romanian language

Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 verb scuti, "to exempt", "to absolve"; plural: scitelnici, scutnici) were peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

 servants in Wallachia

Wallachia

Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...

 and Moldova

Moldova

Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

 who were exempt from state tax

Tax

To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...

es. They were charged with various duties and were attached to boiers (land owners with military or administrative functions) and to monasteries.

The category of scutelnici was introduced by the reforms of Constantine Mavrocordatos

Constantine Mavrocordatos

Constantine Mavrocordatos was a Greek noble who served as Prince of Wallachia and Prince of Moldavia at several intervals...

. It was abolished in Bessarabia

Bessarabia

Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

 after the region was annexed by the Russian Empire

Bessarabia Governorate

Bessarabia was an oblast and later a guberniya in the Russian Empire. It was the eastern part of the Principality of Moldavia annexed by Russia by the Treaty of Bucharest following the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812...

 on April 29, 1818 by the Statute on the Establishment of the Bessarabian Oblast.

The term is preserved in various names, such as the family name

Family name

A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...

s Skutnik

Skutnik

Skutnik is a family name of Romanian origin, derived from the historical term scutnic.It may refer to one of the following people:*Ed Skutnik, the owner of Radio Skutnik...

, Skutelnik (alternative transliterations of the word from the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

) and the settlement Scutelnici

Scutelnici

Scutelnici is a commune in Buzău County, Romania. It is composed of four villages: Arcanu, Brăgăreasa, Lipănescu and Scutelnici....

.