Abstract
The name of the small town Merseburg, some 15 km south of the city of Halle (Saale) has puzzled researchers for decades. Several solutions have been proposed, but all of them were flawed with respect to phonology and / or morphology and / or semantics. Here a new solution, first proposed by Albrecht Greule in 2014 can be corroborated taking also the geological formations of the surroundings of Merseburg into account. Greule connected the first part of the compound name Merse- with names of lakes and islands in Scandinavia. Together with a Swedish dialectal term for ‘heap of stones’ these names point to several terms with the structure Proto-Germ. *mVrs/zV- ‘(having) stone(s)/pebble(s)/rock(s)’ (originally ‘the crushed one’ vel sim.). North of the city of Merseburg we find on the left bank of the river Saale – below thick layers of mud, which might not be older then the Middle-Ages – an area of about 500 × 3000 m characterized exactly by rock and pebbles. Thus Merseburg might have been the ‘castle / town at the area with rocks / stones / pebbles’ – or, more pointedly: the ‘castle on the rocks’.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
