Eupen

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English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology

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From German Eupen and French Eupen, from Middle Dutch Oepen. See German Eupen below for more.

Proper noun

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Eupen

  1. A city in the province of Liège in Belgium; the capital of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.

Translations

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Dutch

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Etymology

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From Middle Dutch Oepen. See German Eupen below for more.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /øːpə(n)/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Hyphenation: Eu‧pen

Proper noun

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Eupen n

  1. Eupen, A town in German-speaking Community, province of Liège, Belgium

Derived terms

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German

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Etymology

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From Middle Dutch Oepen, Oipen, Oupen, Open. According to the prevalent theory from Proto-West Germanic *opan (open). The Middle Dutch spellings indeed seem to point to a back vowel; on the other hand there is no certainty about this and the modern front-rounded vowel would remain unexplained. An alternative theory derives it from *up (up, at the top) + *-īn. This explains the umlaut, but is still at odds with the dialectal pronunciation [ˈøˑʏ̯pə] ~ [ˈøːpə], which would require West-Germanic au-. Therefore a third theory postulates an underlying *Aupīn, in which *aup- would be a blend of *auwju (floodplain) with the hydronym *apa-.

The spelling in Eu- appears in the 16th century and is probably a Franco-Flemish representation of [øː]. The contemporary Standard German pronunciation may to some degree be a spelling pronunciation, but it also approaches the local [øˑʏ̯], which moreover generally corresponds to standard eu, äu.

Pronunciation

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Proper noun

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Eupen n (proper noun, genitive Eupens or (optionally with an article) Eupen)

  1. A town in German-speaking Community, province of Liège, Belgium

Derived terms

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References

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  • Boileau, Armand: Toponymie dialectale germano-romane du nord-est de la province de Liège, Les Belles Lettres, 1971, p. 117
  • Niemeyer, Manfred: Deutsches Ortsnamenbuch, De Gruyter, 2012, p. 168