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The City of Bern, founded in 1191 and first mentioned in a document in 1208, grew to become the biggest aristocratic city-state north of the Alps and a major power in the Old Swiss Confederacy. The present-day extent of Bern included the cantons of Bern, Vaud and large parts of Aargau. Since 1848, Bern has been the Federal City (capital) of Switzerland. == Name == The etymology of the name ''Bern'' is uncertain. Local legend has it that Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, the founder of the City of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt; as this turned out to be a bear, the city had both its name and its heraldic beast. However, the connection between ''Bern'' and ''Bär'' (bear) is a folk etymology.〔Adrian Room, (''Placenames of the World: Origins and Meanings of the Names for 6,600 Countries, Cities, Territories, Natural Features, and Historic Sites'' ), McFarland, 2006, p. 57.〕 It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as ''Bern'' in Middle High German. The Bern zinc tablet, which was found in the 1980s, indicates that the former oppidum′s possible Celtic name ''Brenodor'' was still known in Roman times. Since that time, it has been supposed that ''Bern'' may be a corruption (folk etymological re-interpretation) of the older, similar-sounding Celtic name. The etymology of the Celtic name may have involved the word '' *berna'' “cleft”.〔Andres Kristol (ed.): Lexikon der schweizerischen Gemeindenamen. Huber, Frauenfeld 2005, ISBN 3-7193-1308-5, p. 143.〕 In the late medieval period, Berne was very strongly identified with its heraldic animal, which was used as an allegory of the military and feudal power of the canton within the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Bernese citizen-soldiers were depicted as armed bears, and from at least the 16th century also referred to as ''mötz'', ''motzlin'', a dialectal word for "bear". This term became ''Mutz'' in the modern language, and was in the 19th century applied to the city or canton (as a political or military power) itself. The city of Berne was also jestingly referred to as ''Mutzopolis''.〔''Schweizerisches Idiotikon'' 4.617, s.v. (Mutz ). The word ''mutz'' is in origin an adjective meaning "short, shortened, cut off, docked (of the tail of animals)" and hence as a noun referring to animals with cut-off or naturally short tails, later specifically of the bear. The word's origin lies presumably with Latin ''mutilus''. ''Mutz'' as a name of Bern: ''O Mutz! O Mutz! O Bern! O Bern!'', Gottlieb Jakob Kuhn (1775–1849), see also Bernese March; ''Mutzopolis'' dates to the 19th century, e.g. ''Narrenzunft Mutzopolis'' (1863).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Bern」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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