A History of Central Eastern Europe

One school of thought on the origins of
the villages’ name, and a plausible one
at that, is this: the name came from the
towns’ founder. Assuming his first
name was either Aldo or Adalo (or, how
about the Abbott? ADOLF….), the town
was named by combining his first
name with either stadt or dorf resulting
in 4 possibilities: Aldostadt and Aldodorf
or Adalostadt and Adalodorf. As time
passed and people forgot the elusive
founder and his name, it seemed wise
to assume a mispronunciation and
change the name to ALTENSTADT or
ALTENDORF. The other option would be to have people from outside the area think that
you had a speech impediment and could not say ALTENSTADT correctly. The easy
translation of this common name shared by many villages into Slovak yielded STARÁ
VES and into Hungarian gave O’FALU; compared to Adalo Ves or, even worse Adalo’falu,
both uncommon to say the least, it becomes easier to accept this theory. This works if
certain assumptions are presumed factual without proof: (1) the founder was named
Adalo or Aldo, (2) this person founded the pre‐Tartar village, (3) the founder disappeared
and (4) people forgot the missing guy.
Congratulations! Having met all 4 conditions (since we are assuming them a priori) you
are one of very, very few people (less than 10 I would say), not only world‐wide but of
all people that have ever existed to know how it came to pass that OLD TOWN was named
“Old” when it was new, or to be precise, “re‐new”!!
Those involved in the post‐Tartar rebuilding are
named in extant records and no one bearing these
given names has surfaced though I repeat, and it
bears repeating, what about the Abbott named
Adolf? So our mysterious Mr. Adalo/Aldo must
remain clouded by the mist that collects as time
passes just as any record of the 12 th c or earlier
village that once stood here has done. It is not
known if any archeological excavations have
been done in the area to find remnants of this
alleged earlier village.
Soon after the Mongols left, all ravaged lands
reverted to the king and as already related, a
huge tract of this borderland came into the
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