Ljubljana
During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the area. Ljubljana itself was first mentioned in the first half of the 12th century. Situated at the middle of a trade route between the northern Adriatic Sea and the Danube region, it was the historical capital of Carniola, one of the Slovene-inhabited parts of the Habsburg monarchy. It was under Habsburg rule from the Middle Ages until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. After World War II, Ljubljana became the capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The city retained this status until Slovenia became independent in 1991 and Ljubljana became the capital of the newly formed state.
The origin of the name Ljubljana is unclear. In the Middle Ages, both the river and the town were also known by the German name Laibach. This name was in official use as an endonym until 1918, and it remains frequent as a German exonym, both in common speech and official use. The city is called Lubiana in Italian and Labacum in Latin.
The earliest attestation of the German name is from 1144 and the earliest attestation of the Slovenian form is 1146. The Greek form of the latter, Λυπλιανές (Lyplianes), is attested in a 10th-century source, the Life of Gregentios, which locates it in the country of the Avars in the 6th century. This part of the Life is based on a north Italian source written not long after the conquest of 774.
For most scholars, a problem has been in how to connect the Slovene and the German names. The origin from the Slavic ljub- "to love, like" was in 2007 supported as the most probable by the linguist Tijmen Pronk, a specialist in comparative Indo-European linguistics and Slovene dialectology, from the University of Leiden. He supported the thesis that the name of the river derived from that of the settlement. Linguist Silvo Torkar, who specialises in Slovene personal and place names, argued that the name Ljubljana derives from Ljubija, the original name of the Ljubljanica River flowing through it, itself derived from the Old Slavic male name Ljubovid, "the one of a lovely appearance". The name Laibach, he claimed, was actually a hybrid of German and Slovene and derived from the same personal name.
Map - Ljubljana
Map
Country - Slovenia
Currency / Language
ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
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EUR | Euro | € | 2 |
ISO | Language |
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SL | Slovene language |