Ljubljana - Name and Symbol

Name and Symbol

The origin of the city's name is unclear. In the Middle Ages, both the river and the town were also known by the German name Laibach, which was in official use until 1918. For most scholars, the problem has been in how to connect the Slovene and the German names. The origin from the Slavic -ljub LYOOB '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 the name of the settlement. The linguist Silvo Torkar, who specialises in Slovene personal and place names, argued at the same place for the thesis 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 kind appearance". The name Laibach, he claimed, was actually a hybrid of German and Slovene and derived from the same personal name.

The symbol of the city is the Ljubljana Dragon. It is depicted on the top of the tower of the Ljubljana Castle in the Ljubljana coat-of-arms and on the Ljubljanica-crossing Dragon Bridge (Zmajski most). It symbolises power, courage, and greatness.

There are several explanations on the origin of the Ljubljana Dragon. According to the celebrated Greek legend, the Argonauts on their return home after having taken the Golden Fleece found a large lake surrounded by a marsh between the present-day towns of Vrhnika and Ljubljana. It is there that Jason struck down a monster. This monster has become the dragon that today is present on the city coat of arms and flag. It is historically more believable that the dragon was adopted from Saint George, the patron of the Ljubljana Castle chapel built in the 15th century. In the legend of Saint George, the dragon represents the old ancestral paganism overcome by Christianity. According to another explanation, related to the second, the dragon was at first only a decoration above the city coat of arms. In Baroque, it became part of the coat of arms and in the 19th and especially the 20th century, it outstripped the tower and other elements.