The name
Afritz is ultimately derived from the Slovene prepositional phrase
za brdce 'behind the small hill'. The Slovene phrase fused to yield *
Zabrdce, which was borrowed into
Middle High German as *
Zafriz (from which, in turn,
Cobrc was borrowed back into Slovene). The initial
z- was misunderstood as the Middle High German preposition
ze 'at', yielding the modern German decomposition
Afritz. ==Geography==