Odp: town and fence

----- Original Message -----

From: morten thoresen

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 1:59 PM

Subject: [cybalist] town and fence

Morten writes: Poland: Olsztyn (Cold mean Oldertun - "Oldtown) Ketrzyn Korscierzyna Polczyna Kwidzyn

[Use Unicode UTF-8 encoding to see Polish letters]

 

Dear Morten,

 

Welcome to the list. Thanks for your interesting comments on tun and gard in Norwegian. I regret to tell you that your suggestions concerning the Polish placenames listed above cannot be correct. I have grave doubts as regards most of your German material as well, but I leave it to those who know more about German onomastics.

 

(1) Olsztyn, pronounced [olshtin], more or less, is a Polonised version of German Allenstein. The present town was founded about 1350 by the Teutonic Knights who had subdued the West Baltic lands of Prussia and Sudovia (now northeastern Poland), killing or driving out most of the local pagan population (the official name for those acts of ethnic cleansing was "conversion to Christianity"). Allenstein itself is derived from the name of the River Alna (Polish Łyna) on which the town is located -- most likely translating of a West Baltic name.

 

(2) The remaining names (Kętrzyn, Kościerzyna [sic] , Połczyn [sic] and Kwidzyn) cannot be cut morphologically in the way you suggest (X-zyn) for the very good reason that Polish rz, cz and dz (and sz as well) are indivisible digraphs standing for SINGLE phonemes (like English sh or th). Kościerzyna and Połczyn are Slavic formations with the suffix *-in.

 

(3) The name Kwidzyn echoes Old Prussian Kwedin, the name of an island on the Vistula and of a Pomezanian village located there. The town as we know it grew round Marienwerder -- a castle built by the Teutonic Knights (they captured Kwedin in 1233), today a great tourist attraction (that's where I first met my wife, incidentally).

 

(4) The same notorious Teutonic Knights exterminated a Prussian tribe called the Barts. The central village of the Bart area was called Rast. The Knights established a military outpost there. By 1357 it had developed into a town called Rastenburg. The most famous attempt by German officers to assassinate Hitler was launched at his East Prussian headquarters some 5 miles away. In 1945 Rastenburg (Polish Rastembork) was transferred to Poland under the provisions of the Potsdam Conference. A year later its name was changed to Kętrzyn to commemorate a local 19th c. pro-Polish activist, who was born as Adalbert von Winkler but in his mature years translated his name into Polish, becoming Wojciech Kętrzyński (German Winkel = Polish kąt). Kętrzyn is a back-formation from that.

 

These examples show very clearly, I hope, how risky it is to etymologise placenames without knowing anything about their history.

 

Piotr