Talk:Freidorf

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It's sounds very stange that Johnny used to swim in that river, according to the fact that he moved to USA at an age of 7 months!!

 My mother said she grew up with Johnny Weissmuller(Tarzan)on Long Island, New York.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.236.54.150 (talk) 14:47, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply] 

What was the story of the place before 1723?[edit]

The article, citing a weird, confusing source from the dead website www.banaterra.eu, lists two sets of names, without any information concerning the first.

So, has there been a Hungarian village there? Or even two (Szabadfalu and Zabadfalua)? Google Translate leaves much to the imagination, and the source itself seems chaotic. Was it destroyed or abandoned in time? When, during the wars against the Turks?

Szabadfalva means in Hungarian the same as Freidorf means in German: "free village". If there had been such a Hungarian settlement there in the 14th-15th centuries, it makes sense that the 19th & 20th-century Hungarian authorities, who tried hard to Magyarise as many German, Romanian, Slavic etc. personal and place-names as possible, used the name Szabadfalva for the German village of Freidorf. But who translated whose name? Or was it a double translation - the German settlers adopted "Szabadfalva" in their own language in the 1730s, and the Hungarian authorities tried to reverse that after the demographic changes setting in after the 1836 cholera epidemic, the 1848 Revolution, and 1867 Compromise?

This also draws into question whether the German 1728 Neudorf ("new village") got its name changed to Freidorf as the new settlers learned about the old Hungarian name, or - as claimed in the article - because they were exempt from paying taxes. Quite a (name) coincidence. Also, many settlers were attracted to the Banat after it being conquered back from the Turks, by offering them convenient taxation conditions. This wasn't specific to Freidorf. We should check again, as popular etymologies are not to be quoted as being accurate. Arminden (talk) 22:58, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]