BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:Because there isn't anything I've been able to find that supports your explanation. 'Zagreb' appears to mean either 'hill' or 'to dig/scoop out' and is probably Hungarian in origin. It's almost certainly not Messapian.I find those etymologies with Croatian for "hill" or Croatian for "to scoop" or Croatian for "to dig" to be very questionable. The Croatian word for "hill" is "brijeg" ('j' is always pronounced as 'y' in "yes" in Croatian), ultimately from German "Berg". Change from "ije" to "e" is typical of the Zagreb dialect, but 'b' and 'g' switching places would be very unusual. The Croatian for "scoop (water from a well)" is "grabiti", and a change from 'a' to 'e' would be unexpected. As far as I know, there is no evidence that "grebati" ever meant "to dig", it means "to scratch", and it almost certainly comes from the same root as Greek for "to engrave/write", γραφειν. The usual word for "to dig" in Croatian is, and has always been, "kopati", it probably comes from the same root as Greek for "to dig", σκαπτειν.
But perhaps the best argument for rejecting any sort of Croatian etymology for "Zagreb" is the fact that the earliest attested name for Zagreb in Latin is "Zagrabiensem". The letter 'z' didn't stand for 'z' in Medieval Latin, the sound 'z' was denoted with 'j' or 's': the Medieval Latin name for Zadar was written as "Jadera" (possibly influenced by probably unrelated ancient name "Iader"), the Medieval Latin name for Bizovac (the name in the local dialect being "Bizovci", 'c' being pronounced 'ts') was "Bisofzy", and the name of the river "Zala" in Hungary was almost always written "Sala" in Medieval Latin documents. The 'z' in "Zagrabiensem", in all likelihood, stood for the 'dz' sound, which existed in Old Croatian, but changed to 'z' in Modern Croatian. The "Za-" in "Zagreb" doesn't come from the Croatian prefix "za-".
As for it coming from Hungarian, I see one reason to assume that it doesn't: Hungarian has vowel harmony, and Hungarian name for Zagreb is "Zagrab", presumably because "Zagreb" wouldn't be a phonotactically valid word in Hungarian. So, doesn't it seem much more likely that the Croatian name "Zagreb" is more original, considering that a change from "Zagreb" to "Zagrab" would be regular in Hungarian, but a change from "Zagrab" to "Zagreb" would be irregular in Croatian?
BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:It also has a capital city, which is called Belfast.Then "capital city" means something different in English than what I thought it meant.
