What does “Vranik” mean? I think it’s about something small, petty? Little mountain?
Other town names are interesting too. If you know the story, don’t be shy to share!
Vraník is word for a horse of black color in czech. But who knows why is that place named like that 
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Thx for sharing. Would’ve been funny if Pie (escaped horse’s name?) were that color and had escaped to the clearing in front of the palisade wall
That would be quite a long way for him 
. If you want to explain some other name, I can try.
Thanks for Vranik! It was stupid of me to forget the Slavic root “vran” for black color.
A wager anyone? My ideas about other names:
- Talmberg - the German for a settlement in a hollow or a valley
- Rattay - judging by the size of the town, it can be linked it with the German word Rathouse (a city hall)
- Neuhof - again, it’s a German for “new town” (or “new yard”, if the horse farm was the first what they built there)
- Uzhits - a narrow river
- Skalice - a rocky landscape
Need help with:
- Sasau, Merhojed - look a bit German, but I doubt they are
- Samopesh - looks Slavic, but I think it’s a German root here
- Ledechko
I will write the names in original czech form. Some of them I knew and the more complicated ones I found on internet.
Talmberg - yes, it’s german, it means probably “hill in the valley”
Rataje - “rataj” is old czech word for a farmer or ploughman, so it’s called like that probabaly because a lot of farmers settled there.
Neuhof (in czech Nový dvur) - yes, you are right.
Užice - could be derived from an old name of a founder, or from “užina” = narrow place.
Stríbrná (silver) Skalice - yes, rocky landscape.
Sázava (Sasau) - named after nearby river, name probably has something to do with a mud in the river.
Mrchojedy (Merhojed) - this is funny and weird, in English it could be translate as “Carrioneaters”. Probably named because people there did eat a dead bodies. “mršina/mrcha” = carrion, “jedení” = eating. Most likely created by some neighbour settlers as a mocking name to embarrass them, and it stayed like that It’s very weird name even for Czechs.
Samopše - it’s actually explained in the game codex “it was renowned as a centre of agriculture and for an ancient species of wheat locally known as “samopše-špalta” (Samopesh-spelt), from which the village derives its name.”
Ledečko - probably derived from a name of man called “Ledek”, who settled there.
I hope it helped. If you want some more name explain, tell me
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Great, thanks!
Mrchojedy might have an origin in a period of famine, where locals had to resort to eating carcasses of dead farm animals, which have starved to death.
Sasau could be a toponym of celtic origin from the word Satios which means grove, so it would loosely translate as a “river which flows through the pine tree groves”. Second theory is that it is of slavic origin and would be related to the fact that the river carries a lot of clay sediments, so it would be a “river which deposits clay”. Funnily enough, both could have a basis in reality as each culture could have assigned its own meaning to the original river’s name, based on what was more important for them.
Ledečko is kind of a mystery to me, I haven’t been able to find much about the origin of the name online either.
I love toponyms, they often carry so much history in a single word.
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Interesting read , thank you all.
Sasau is “Sázava” in Czech, and the name seems very Slavic to me. Czech river names often end with “-ava” - Sázava, Vltava, Úslava etc. I even read some theory that “ava” could mean “water” in some proto-slavic language.
I found 3 explanations. First: from celtic sath-ava, meaning “river flowing through pine woods”. Second from czech origin “usazovat”, meaning sediment going down the water and making it murky. Third is from word “saze”, which mean “soot”. I think the second one is probably right, but who knows.
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