Bucur is the legendary Romanian
shepherd
A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. ''Shepherd'' derives from Old English ''sceaphierde (''sceap'' 'sheep' + ''hierde'' ' herder'). ''Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations, ...
who is said to have founded
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north o ...
, giving it his name. While the legend about the shepherd is probably apocryphal, the name of the city ( ro, București) is actually quite likely derived from a person named Bucur, as the suffix ''
-ești
The suffix ''-ești'' (pronounced , sometimes changed to ''-ăști'' ) is widespread in Romanian placenames. It is the plural of the possessive suffix '' -escu'', formerly used for patronyms and currently widespread in family names. Obsolete spell ...
'' is used for settlements derived from personal names, usually of the owner of the land or of the founder, though it is more likely that Bucur was the noble who owned the land.
There is an old small church named ''
Biserica lui Bucur'' ("Bucur's Church") which, as the legend goes, was built by Bucur himself. However, this is not true, since the church appears to have been built at the beginning of the 18th century, and the oldest archeological remains found in the surrounding area were from the second half of the 16th century.
[Georgescu et al., p.76-77]
The earliest reference to Bucur was written by the Franciscan friar
Blasius Kleiner, who claimed that Bucur was both a shepherd and a
haiduc. Another early reference is found in ''An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia'', an 1820 book published in London by the English consul in Bucharest,
William Wilkinson. The earliest reference to Bucur's Church is from a geography manual written by
Iosif Gentilie in 1835.
[
As claimed by I. Fr. Sulzer in 1781, the name ''Bucur'' is probably related with Romanian ''bucurie'' ("joy"), ''bucuros'' ("joyful"), and ''a bucura'' ("to become joyful"), having a cognate in Albanian, ''bukur'' ("beautiful"), and it is believed to be of Dacian origin.][Ion I. Russu, Limba traco-dacilor, 1967, Editura Ştiințifică]
There are various other etymologies given by early scholars for the city name, including the one of Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi
Derviş Mehmed Zillî (25 March 1611 – 1682), known as Evliya Çelebi ( ota, اوليا چلبى), was an Ottoman explorer who travelled through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands over a period of forty years, recording ...
, who said Bucharest is named after a certain Ebu-Kariş, from the tribe of Beni-Kureiş, and that of an early 19th-century book published in Vienna, where it is assumed its name is derived from Bukovie, a beech forest.[
]
See also
* Founding of Bucharest
The history of Bucharest covers the time from the early settlements on the locality's territory (and that of the surrounding area in Ilfov County) until its modern existence as a city, capital of Wallachia, and present-day capital of Romania.
Pr ...
* Etymology of Bucharest
* List of Romanian words of possible Dacian origin
Notes
{{reflist
References
*Florian Georgescu et al. ''Istoria Oraşului București'', Muzeul de Istorie a Oraşului București, 1965
*Alexandru Rosetti. ''Istoria limbii române'', 2 vols., Bucharest, 1965–1969.
External links
Cetatea lui Bucur
History of Bucharest
Shepherds
Legendary Romanian people
Romanian legends
Place name etymologies
Romanian folklore