Many Bavarian towns adorn themselves with middle names that often sound more interesting than the official name. Dialect speakers who live outside the city, for example, do not say Munich, but Minga. There is even an equivalent in distant America, where the city of San Francisco outside of its truce is known as Frisco. The Franks speak of Aschebersch when they mean Aschaffenburg. Who would have guessed that the town of Windischeschenbach lies behind the name Tschitscherlboch, or that Viechtach in the Bavarian Forest lies behind Veijda. Klouster, actually called Rinchnach, is very close to Veijda. It is no less strange with the Swabian capital Augsburg, because it also bears the nickname Datschiburg. “The Augsburg Datschi was already well known in the 19th century,” says the place name researcher Wolf-Armin Freiherr von Reitzenstein, who has been tracking down the mysteries of place names all his life. “In 1864, the word datsche not only referred to a popular pastry, but also to people with certain characteristics,” says Reitzenstein, seriously summarizing the genesis of datschiburg and its population.
The derivation of a place name is not always as easy to explain as in the cases mentioned. Intensive linguistic-historical research is often required, but it is not uncommon for curious stories to emerge. Place names are among the oldest names of all, only the names of bodies of water go back even further. The oldest names in the German language belong to the rivers, such as the Danube (attested as “fluvii Danuvii” in 51 BC) and the Isar. In addition to around 45,000 names of settlements, there are at least two million names of mountains, fields and bodies of water in Bavaria. It would take hundreds of years to explore everything. After all, Reitzenstein has already unraveled a lot. Among other things, he published his results in standard works on old Bavarian, Swabian and Franconian place names, but also in those published by him Leaves for Upper German name research.
In the current issue, the researcher deals with old dialectal and popular place names. These are often referred to differently in the sources and are often extended by adverbs, adjectives, nouns and sometimes even whole sentences. Some names were changed by dialect influences. Reitzenstein mentions the village of Gars am Inn, which was still called Gars in a document from 1285, but by 1557 it had become Garsch. The Lower Bavarian Gottfrieding appears in a document from 1480 as Gottfriding, but in 1579 the name was Göpfarting.
Altmyl instead of Alman
A momentum of its own was set in motion in particular by the fact that Latin place names were translated quite freely. Sometimes the old name was replaced by alternative names. Reitzenstein recognizes a dialect form in a document from 1612, in which Schongau is called Schongavium, vulgo Schaga. Vulgo expresses here what was generally said in everyday life at the time. Neukirchen in the Bavarian Forest is referred to as “Neukürchen Markht Vorm Waldt vulgo Balbini” in 1665. After the localization of the place, the genitive of the name of pastor Palvinus is mentioned as a folk addition. The historian Aventine, on the other hand, was upset in 1519 that the people had changed the name of the river Alman “into Altmyl”, in his view a deterioration.
The dialect of the rural population shines through in the name of the river Loisach: “The Loisach, or as the farmers say, the Luisa”, wrote the writer Ludwig Steub around 1850. A source from 1851 near Agathazell in the Allgäu describes the development of the dialect form: “From this In the vernacular of the people, Sant Agten gradually became Tatte, as the country people now call Agathazell.” But the struggle for the interpretation of the names also produces cheerful solutions. For example in the village of Kirchweidach near Altötting, whose name, according to Reitzenstein, goes back to the Old High German wîdahi (willow bush). However, an SZ editor who was socialized there knows a different interpretation that is circulating there. Accordingly, a street sweeper leaned on a broomstick instead of sweeping, whereupon the mayor appealed to him “Kiehr weida!” (go on) called to order.