Name of Austria

The native (German) name of Austria, , derives from the Old High German word "eastern realm", recorded in the so-called Document of 996, applied to the Margraviate of Austria, a march, or borderland, of the Duchy of Bavaria created in 976. The name is seemingly comparable to Austrasia, the early middle age term for the "eastern lands" of Francia, as known from the written records.

The Old High German name parallels the Middle Latin name ("eastern borderland"), alternatively called . The shorter Latinized name is first recorded in the 12th century. It has occasionally led to confusion, because, while it renders the Germanic word for "east" it is reminiscent of the native Latin term for "south", (see Name of Australia).

In the 12th century, the Margraviate was elevated to the status of duchy, in 1453 to archduchy and from 1804 claiming imperial status, all the time retaining both the name and the Latin name .

, a translation of into Standard German, was used officially from 1938, when the country was incorporated into the German Reich, until 1945.

The contemporary state was created in 1955, with the Austrian State Treaty, and is officially called the Republic of Austria ().

German name

is derived from Old High German . The term probably originates as a vernacular translation of the Latin name (eastern borderland). The is related to Old High German (eastern), but its exact derivation is unclear. Old High German rihhi had the meaning of "realm, domain".

The , also called the Bavarian Eastern March (Ostmark) and the March of Austria (), was a prefecture of the Duchy of Bavaria. It was assigned to the Babenberg family in 976. The variant is known from a single usage dated 996. Later Medieval documents record the word as either (official) or as (folk and poetic usage). The variation is first recorded in 998. appears on a deed granted by Emperor Henry IV and dated 1058.

Friedrich Heer, a 20th-century Austrian historian, stated in his book (The Struggle Over Austrian Identity), that the Germanic form was not a translation of the Latin word, but both resulted from a much older term originating in the Celtic languages of ancient Austria: more than 2,500 years ago, the major part of the actual country was called by the Celtic Hallstatt culture of the land; according to Heer, or meant "east" or "easterns", whereas is related to the modern German , meaning "realm". Accordingly, would essentially mean the same as and , thus Austria. The Celtic name was eventually Latinised to after the Romans conquered the area that encloses most of modern-day Austria, in around 15 BC. later became a Roman province in the mid 1st century AD. Heer's hypothesis is not accepted by linguists.

An alternative theory, proposed by the Austrian Slavistics professor Otto Kronsteiner, suggests that the term is taken from a Slavic toponym meaning 'pointed hill', taking its popular meaning of 'Eastern realm' at a much later time. This theory was rejected as untenable by Austrian linguist Heinz-Dieter Pohl.

Another remoter possibility is that the name comes from the Ostrogoths, who had a kingdom in what is now Austria and northern Italy.

Ostarrîchi document

The document was issued by Emperor Otto III on November 1, 996 in Bruchsal to Gottschalk von Hagenau, Bishop of Freising. It is today kept in the in Munich.

The historical significance of the document lies in the fact that it is the first time that the name , the linguistic ancestor of , the German name for Austria, is mentioned, even though it applied only to a relatively small territory. The document concerns a donation of the "territory which is known in the vernacular as " ( ), specified as the region of Neuhofen an der Ybbs (). The emperor donated this land to the abbey of Freising as a fief. The lands and some other communities in the vicinity, which the abbey acquired later, were held until 1803, when they were incorporated into Austria.

Latin name

The first written mention of the name Austria is found in the work Historia Langobardorum by Paolo Diacono and dates back to 796.

The name is a latinization of German (that is, the spelling of the name Austria approximates, for the benefit of Latin speakers, the sound of the German name ). This has led to much confusion as German is "east", but Latin is "south". That is why the name is similar to Australia, which is derived from the Latin ("southern land").

The name is first recorded as (Margrave of Austria) on a deed issued by Conrad III to the Klosterneuburg Monastery in 1147. On the Privilegium Minus of 1156, the name of the country is given as (March of Austria) and as (Duchy of Austria). In English usage, "Austria" is attested since the early 17th century.

Other languages

Derivations from

All Germanic languages other than English have a name for Austria corresponding to : Afrikaans , Danish , Dutch , West Frisian , Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian (Bokmål) or (Nynorsk) and Swedish . Finnish is also derived from the German name: means "east" and "state". "Austria" or a phonetic derivative (such as ) was adopted in most other languages, including Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Maltese, Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Slovene, Greek, Estonian, Turkish, and Albanian. French is one of the exceptions within the Romance group in adapting the German name, . Catalan also did the same, though the forms are no longer in use. Apart from the modern-day form of Austria, antiquated forms used in Catalan were and , and , which are the forms derived in that language to correspond to German .

Derivations from Slavic

The Arabic name for Austria is (). The Arabic appellation of Austria was first used during the Crusades and was borrowed from the Slavic name for "Germans", whence Russian (), Polish , Croatian/Bosnian , Serbian /, Slovene , Czech , Slovak , etc.

In Persian, Austria was called () (the same name as Arabic) and when the Turks later settled in Anatolia during the Ottoman Empire era, they borrowed the Arabic name of Austria as well, calling the country Nemçe. Currently, Persian uses the name (), derived from the French pronunciation.

In Romanian, a Romance language, the word (pl. ) still exists as a Slavic borrowing, used as a colloquial name for Germans, alongside neologism (pl. ). However, historically, was also used for Austrians in chronicles, while Austria was called (literally "the Austrian [now German] country"). Nowadays, the Romanian name of the country is , while Austrians are called (sg. ).

,

The Czech and Slovak languages have a peculiar name for Austria. Czech and Slovak neither derived from German nor from Latin . The Czech name of , previously also and later , which is still used for the states of Upper and Lower Austria (), originates in the name of the Austrian castle and town of Raabs an der Thaya near the Czech-Austrian border, formerly also known as or . It is worth noting that in his Geography the ancient writer Ptolemy mentions two tribes (of unknown ethnic affiliation) named and which inhabit the areas around the Danube River "up to his bend", roughly corresponding to the region north of Vienna and southwestern Slovakia.

Another possible explanation of Czech and Slovak : The predecessor of Austria and Slovenia was Slovene principality Carantania. The central part of Carantania (the territory of present-day southern Austria and north-eastern Slovenia) is named in Slovenian (or in the old version ), in Slovak , in German and in English Carinthia. The Old High German name of Austria () appeared in written document more than three hundred years later than the name Carantania, while the shorter Latin name was first mentioned only in 12th century. Therefore is it reasonably to assume that the present-day Czech and Slovak name for Austria (, ) developed from the original Slavic name for Carantania since in early middle ages and also later the ancestor of the present-day Slovaks and Slovenes were not divided by the wedge of Germanic or Germanized population.

See also

• History of Austria (for a broader historical perspective)
• Austrasia

External links

• AEIOU Encyclopedia
• Historical information in German
• Template:Austriaforum
• Die Ostarrichi-Urkunde, Template:LBALink
• Wikisource: Text of the document of 996 (Latin)
• Heinz Dieter Pohl: Pohl: Ostarrîchi 996–1996 Tausend Jahre Name Österreich