Bârlad

From Romanian Bârlad.

Bârlad

1. A city in Vaslui County, Romania.

• Bîrlad — 1953–1993 spelling

Borrowed from Old East Slavic Берладь (Berladĭ); first attested in 1159 in the Hypatian Codex, in which the people living in the area are called Берладники (Berladniki).

Of dubious origin, claimed with other toponyms, including Berlin, the multitude of which only makes the lacking direct attestation of a descendant even more suspicious, to be formed from a noun Proto-Slavic *bьrlъ or *bьrľь of variously imagined signification, in this case with collective suffix *-ědь. In another proposal, it would be a Cuman, vulgo Middle Kipchak oikonym and derive from no less than Arabic بِلَاد (bilād, “ends”), the intrusive р (r) of which has parallels in Turkic borrowings in Slavic such as Russian карма́н (karmán, “pocket”).

• IPA^(key): /bɨrˈlad/

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Bârlad m

1. a city in Vaslui County, Romania
2. a river in Romania, tributary to the Siret

• Moldovanu, Dragoş (2009) “Reconstructing an Old Slavic toponymic field: the base *bĭrl- in Romanian toponymy and its historical implications”, in Zeitschrift für Slawistik, volume 54, number 3, →DOI, pages 320–337