Berlin.
Berlin (the capital and largest city and state of Germany)
Meaning & usage
Berlin (the capital and largest city and state of Germany)
Berlin (federal government of Germany)
Where this word comes from
The place is first mentioned by this name in the late 12th century (as Middle Low German Berlyn). The origin is unknown. Slavic by the suffix -in. According to (incorrect) folk etymology, the name is derived from the Bär (“bear”) that is the symbol of the city. In a popular etymology of Germanists, it is derived from a Polabian stem *berl- ~ *birl- (“swamp”), for which lexical item there is no evidence in Polabian nor in any Slavic language. Closest to that would be an unknown simpler relative of *bьrlogъ (“cave”). Attested vocabulary is Polabian poro (“swamp, bog”). *bělь also meant a “swampy meadow” or “white field”, which fits the location at the märkische Streusandbüchse, the “Margraviate pounce box” notorious for its sandy soil, and is also the noun behind Belitz.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.