Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

The council "had given, on the advice of Gábor Döbrentei, full member of the Hungarian Learned Society [the Academy of Sciencesl new names to geographical locations of historical significance in the Buda Hills in order to remind hikers here of the nation's glorious past," wrote István Eperjessy in his booklet Zugliget (Nook of Groves) in 1905. Such German place-names as Auwinkel, Saukopf, and Himmel were thereby superseded by Hungarian nomenclature. Zugliget, Disznófő [Sow’s Headl, Tündérhegy and the rest were ceremonially read out in the Vadászmajor [Hunters' Manorl, followed by a banquet and an impassioned oration. That was when the Baptism of the Buda Hills occurred.

In memory of the day that the municipality of Buda passed the decree sanctioning the new names (12 June 1847), a plaque was installed on the nearby King Béla’s Well in Kútvölgy (Well Valley) by one Pál Koics, assistant attorney. Another, inscribed, plaque was set up in 1997 on the primary school that now stands where the Hunters' Manor used to be (at 113 Zugligeti út, District XII) to commemorate "the Baptism of the Buda Hills".

Some of the new names of the mounds, slopes and wells of the Buda Hills suggested by Döbrentei refer to real historical events, while others point to local legends, and others again were created by the "godfather” himself. Many of the fancy Hungarian neologisms were actually coined by Döbrentei himself.

It was then that the Svábhegy (Schwab Hill) received its name in memory of the Schwab forces quartered here during the 1868 Siege of Buda; so did Petneházy-rét, the meadow named for the valiant colonel of the emperor who was the first to break, through the northern wall with his relief forces into the Castle, where he "fought like a lion”, according to contemporary sources.

Historical events can be found behind the names of the slopes Kurucles (Kuruc Ambush), Törökvész (Turkish Disaster). The memory of the Hunyadis is also kept alive by several geographical features renamed at that time. Among these are Mátyáshegy (Matthias Hill), Hunyad orom (Hunyad Ridge) and Vérhalom (Blood Mound) - the latter being the place where Mihály Szilágyi collected the dead body, to be buried in Gyulaferhérvár, of László Hunyadi, who had been beheaded on the orders of the perfidious Ladislas V.

Gábor Döbrentei (1786—1851) was a diverse man of letters who played a leading role in the literary and scholarly life of his county. He edited the journal The Hungarian Museum oh Transylvania from 1814 to 1818 in Kolozsvár and kept contact with such eminent public figures of his times as Kazinczy,

42