Hey, thanks for correcting me! As I put in the post, I wasn't really sure about if it was right or not(my German is very rudimentary). However, by translating Burg as "city," I was implying that the fact that in the Middle Ages, the cites that started to pop up were called burgs, because they were built within fortifications to defend against invaders was well known. Hills and mountains were also strategic locations for cities and/or castles, so that may be why the two terms are related. That's why the citizens were called Bürgers, and as you said, the master of the citizens, or mayor, was the "Bürgermeister." Despite that, it's great to have someone to discuss this with! I love languages and names, and sometimes I find we take our names for granted without finding out what they mean. After all, in ancient times, names were closely tied to a person's destiny( like in the Bible, the name 'Shem," one of Noah's sons from whom the Jewish people descended means "name" in Hebrew, because the line of Shem, according to the Bible, is the line from which modern Jews and eventually, Christians came from. In fact, Jews are also known as Semites, which is an abbreviated version of Shemites, which the Jews were previously referred to as).
Wow, I'm so glad I joined this community of SSSS readers - I learn new things every day!
And now that you mention it, I think I remember to have heard/read somewhere that the first cities (or what you could consider cities) where indeed fortified, first with wooden piles, later with stone walls, since the environment (and neighbouring peoples) wasn't as friendly as they are today, simply speaking.
But since that is getting a bit off-topic, something about our dear Emil:
his name is derived from the roman name
Aemilius, which itself comes from the greek
aimylos/
aimylios, meaning "charming", "endearing" or "clever".
And I think someone somewhere mentioned it before, but "Västerström" is compunded of the words for
west and
river/
stream/
current, resulting again in a geographical origin.
