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Post by rusebg on Sept 29, 2008 14:49:59 GMT -5
Since I travel a lot throughout Romania (even passed Hungary), something made me an impression during my journeys and this is the name of the places in Romania that are both in Romanian and Hungarian. So, this is my question: why is Koloszvar Cluj-Napoca when let's say Timisoara is Temesvar, Sigisoara Segesvar, etc? Shouldn't it be Kolosoara or something? ;D
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Post by diurpaneus on Sept 29, 2008 15:36:58 GMT -5
There is a law that says that if a city/village/whatever is has a minority population greater than 20%, all the official signs and local legal documents have to be bilingual.
That why we have all those names you were talking about. Cluj-Napoca / Kolozsvar / Klausenburg Sibiu / Nagyszeben / Hermannstadt Brasov / Brasso / Kronstadt Constanta / Kustendje Medgidia / Mecidiye etc.
Even if some of those cities (like Sibiu) don`t have a significant German or Hungarian population, their names are posted at the entrance of the city for historical reasons.
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yeni
Moderator
gulash freak
Posts: 327
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Post by yeni on Sept 29, 2008 15:49:26 GMT -5
Since I travel a lot throughout Romania (even passed Hungary), something made me an impression during my journeys and this is the name of the places in Romania that are both in Romanian and Hungarian. So, this is my question: why is Koloszvar Cluj-Napoca when let's say Timisoara is Temesvar, Sigisoara Segesvar, etc? Shouldn't it be Kolosoara or something? ;D The vár means castle in Hungarian so it means blabla+castle, like Temescastle, Segescastle and Kolozscastle and u can find many placenames in other parts of Hungary and former Hungary with vár. it was also included in the latin name of Kolozsvár and also in the German version. Thats a good question why wasn’t it used in the Ro version i think Clujoara would be more difficult to say in Romanian. But it would be good to know when was the city’s name first recorded in Romanian text and what was the first Ro version of the name. The Napoca thing is a recent change, that was the name of the antique town on the site of todays Kolozsvár/Cluj. It was added to the city’s name in 1974, i guess political reasons.
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Post by diurpaneus on Sept 29, 2008 15:57:39 GMT -5
The name "Cluj" comes from the latin name of " Castrum Clus". The name of Clus was used by the Romanians. When it changed to "Cluj" I cannot say for sure. Here is a part of a Romanian religious book printed in Cluj. It says "Tiperit en Klus en Anul Domnului 1701" (Printed in Klus in the year of the Lord 1701)
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Post by Catcher in the Rye on Sept 30, 2008 6:55:08 GMT -5
Timisoara and Sighisoara names derive from the Hungarian name of the places. That's not the case of Cluj. And not to make people confuzed, Sighisoara was an exclusive Saxon city, why the Romanians chose to use the Hungarian name for the place instead of the proper German one is another problem. As for Timisoara probably in the past was called Timisana or Timis (from the ancient Tibiscum) as some documents shows. It was part of the Hungarian kingdom in the Middle ages and a fortress was built or rebulit and called by Hungarians Timis fortress (Temesvar) this name was latter adopted also by Romanians as Timisoara.
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Post by vlaici on Oct 12, 2008 9:11:55 GMT -5
Since I travel a lot throughout Romania (even passed Hungary), something made me an impression during my journeys and this is the name of the places in Romania that are both in Romanian and Hungarian. ;D Allow me to ask why you were not impressed by other names: Zlatna, Tarnave, Bistrita, ... They are from Transilvania and they mean nothing in Romanian or Hungarian (do they?)!... I expect you to answer me with a map of the first Bulgarian empire- would it be enough? I hope our Romanian roads will not tire you too much!
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Post by rusebg on Oct 16, 2008 13:00:34 GMT -5
Vlaici, I don't post maps, you mistake me with other people. Neither was I trying to provoke something or someone, this is just something I thought during these long boring journeys. But you are right about those names, I can even add quite a bit more to the ones you listed, some in the original Bulgarian form, some slightly modified.
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