The name came from the ancient name of the
Abrud river. Although first recorded only in 1271 in the form
terra Obruth, the name of the town might have derived from a hypothetical
Dacian word for gold:
"obrud". The Hungarian name is
Abrudbánya (
"bánya" means mine in Hungarian). According to Hungarian linguists, the town's modern name reflects a characteristic vowel shift in the medieval
Hungarian language which occurred in the 14th century. The Romanian name
Abrud was borrowed from the Hungarian form, the transformation of
Obruth to
Abrud reflects the typically Hungarian
vowel shift (from o to a) as in the case of the
Szamos and
Maros rivers. If the ancient form had survived directly in the Romanian language, then according to the Romanian linguistic rules it would have produced
Aurud. According to Romanian linguist
Nicolae Drăganu, the earlier form of the Hungarian name was
Obruth and
Obrudbania which was a Greek variant of a Thracian word. He states that the Romanian form (a) came from the romanized Dacians, while the Hungarian form (o) came from the Daco-Romans through Slavic mediation. ==History==