Gemer (village)

Revúca District in the Banská Bystrica Region

Gemer (German: (rare) Gömer, Gemer; Hungarian: Sajógömör) is a village and municipality in Revúca District in the Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia.

Etymology

The older theory of János Melich associated Gemer with the Kyrgyz personal name Kemirbaj and old Turkish place name Kömürtag. This theory was adopted also by Lájos Kiss who explains the name from old Turkic kömür: coal.[1] Šimon Ondruš and Branislav Varsik find this theory unreliable and based on obsolete linguistic approach that tried to explain place names of uncertain origin by random similarities with Turkic words and Hungarian personal names.[2][3]

Newer theory of Šimon Ondruš associates the name with East-Slavic names like Gomeroňa, Gomerovka, Gomoroviči, Gomeľ, Gomeľ-Sedlica, Gomeľskaja Ogorodnaja, Gomolino, Gomer-Gora, etc. The names are derived from the Slavic stem gom- with the ablaut suffix -er, -or or reduced -el, -ol. Gomer: "pile", "elavation", "the hillfort build on the terrain elevation", closely related to the Slovak word homoľa (Proto-Slavic gomola) frequent in Slovak oronymes.[4] The current form Gemer is the result of the vocal harmonization in the Hungarian language: Gomer -> Gemer (resp. labialized Gömör) and the backward adoption by Slovaks. Until the 19th century, local Slovaks had preserved also the form Himer/Hymer.[5] 1198 Gomur, 1216 Gumur, 1289 Gemer, 1786 Gömör.[6]

History

Important Bronze Age finds have been made in the village. In historical records, the village was first mentioned in 1198 as Gomur (1216 Gumur, 1289 Gemer) as a settlement below the much older Gemer Castle (which was originally a Slavic fortified settlement). The castle was the capital of Gemer and control point of all the ways for Spiš County.

The settlement below the castle was a royal dominion and in the 14th century it became the capital of Gemer. It was besieged by the Bohemian condottiere Jiskra in the 15th century and it was pillaged by Turks in the 16th century. From 1938 to 1945 it belonged to Hungary under the First Vienna Award.

People

Other residents

Genealogical resources

The records for genealogical research are available at the state archive "Statny Archiv in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia"

  • Roman Catholic church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1733-1896 (parish B)
  • Lutheran church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1730-1895 (parish A)
  • Reformated church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1707-1870 (parish B)

References

  1. ↑ Kiss, Lajos (1978). Földrajzi nevek etimológiai szótára (in Hungarian). Budapest: Akadémiai. p. 244.
  2. ↑ Varsik, Branislav (1990). Slovanské (slovenské) názvy riek na Slovensku a ich prevzatie Maďarmi v 10.-12. storočí (in Slovak). Bratislava: Slovenská akadémia vied. p. 110. ISBN 80-224-0163-3.
  3. ↑ Ondruš, Šimon (1980). "Pôvod názvov stovenských vrchov, hradov a stotíc". Studia Academica Slovaca 9 (in Slovak). Bratislava: Slovenská akadémia vied. p. 264.
  4. ↑ Ondruš 1980, p. 277.
  5. ↑ Varsik 1990, p. 110.
  6. ↑ Ondruš 1980, p. 276.

See also

Coordinates: 48°27′N 20°19′E / 48.450°N 20.317°E / 48.450; 20.317


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.