In modern times, the range is called in
Czech,
Polish and
Slovak and in
Ukrainian, / in
Serbo-Croatian, in
Romanian, in
Rusyn, in
German and in
Hungarian. Although the toponym was recorded by
Ptolemy in the second century AD, the modern form of the name is a
neologism in most languages.
Historical names In late
Roman documents, the Eastern Carpathian Mountains were referred to as
Montes Sarmatici (meaning
Sarmatian Mountains). The Western Carpathians were called
Carpates, a name that is first recorded in
Ptolemy's
Geographia (second century AD). In the Scandinavian
Hervarar saga, which relates ancient Germanic legends about
battles between
Goths and
Huns, the name
Karpates appears in the predictable Germanic form as
Harvaða fjöllum (see
Grimm's law). "
Inter Alpes Huniae et Oceanum est Polonia" ("Between the Hunic Alps and the ocean lies Poland") by
Gervase of Tilbury, was described in his
Otia Imperialia ("Recreation for an Emperor") in 1211.
Havasok ("Snowy Mountains") was its medieval
Hungarian name.
Rus' chronicles referred to it as "Hungarian Mountains". Later sources, such as
Dimitrie Cantemir and the Italian chronicler Giovanandrea Gromo, referred to the range as "Transylvania's Mountains", while the 17th-century historian
Constantin Cantacuzino translated the name of the mountains in an Italian-Romanian glossary to "Rumanian Mountains".
Etymology The etymology of the Carpathians is not clearly established, but the name "Carpates" is highly associated with the old
Dacian tribes called "
Carpes" or "
Carpi" who lived in an area to the east of the Carpathians, from the east, northeast of the Black Sea to the
Transylvanian Plain in the present day Romania and Moldova.
Potential root words people, living in the Carpathian mountains,
Karpates is considered a
Paleo-Balkan name, with evidence provided by the
Albanian kárpë / kárpa, pl.
kárpa / kárpat ('rock, stiff'), and the
Messapic karpa '
tuff (rock),
limestone' (preserved as
càrpë 'tuff' in
Bitonto dialect and
càrparu 'limestone' in
Salentino). The name
Carpates may ultimately be from the
Proto Indo-European root
*sker-/
*ker-, which meant mountain, rock, or rugged (cf. Albanian
kárpë, Germanic root
*skerp-, Old Norse "harrow", Gothic
skarpo, Middle Low German
scharf "potsherd", and Modern High German
Scherbe "shard", Lithuanian
kar~pas "cut, hack, notch", Latvian
cìrpt "to shear, clip"). The archaic Polish word
karpa meant 'rugged irregularities, underwater obstacles/rocks, rugged roots, or trunks'. The more common word
skarpa means a sharp cliff or other vertical terrain, cf. Old English and English
sharp. The name may instead come from Indo-European * 'to turn', akin to Old English 'to turn, change' (English
warp) and Greek 'wrist' (
Karpathos island has the same root word), perhaps referring to the way the Carpathian mountain range bends or veers in an L-shape. == Geography ==