Leuven (French: Louvain) is a city and municipality in the
Belgian province of Flemish Brabant. It is the capital of this
province and also the capital of the administrative and judicial
district of Leuven. Leuven has an area of 5,751 ha and has a
population of over 102,000 inhabitants (March 2020).
Leuven
is located on the Dijle and is known as the seat of the Catholic
University of Leuven , the oldest university in the Low Countries ,
the multinational Anheuser-Busch InBev (historic Brewery Artois ,
later also called Interbrew and InBev), the Boerenbond and the
university hospital Gasthuisberg . Several KU Leuven spin-offs, such
as IMEC or Materialize , are also located in the city. Saint Peter
is the patron saint of Leuven.
Toponymy
The toponym
Leuven is first found in the Annales Vedastini in the year 884 as
Luuanium (Luvanium). Also, Regino Prüm indicate in its world
chronicle in loco qui dicitur Lovön when he discusses the events 884
and 886. The current spelling came into use from the sixteenth
century.
There are several theories as to the origin of the
name: one claims that the name rises to the prehistoric language
spoken in the region before Germanization (second century BC). In
line with Caesar, this language may be called 'Belgian'. In
'Belgian', settlement names were usually derived from personal names
using the suffix -iom . Leuven is a good example of this. The name
ascends to Lubaniom, which is derived from the personal name
Lubanios which means "the beloved". This in turn is derived from the
Indo-European root leubh- , "to love".
Other, older
explanations, such as that the name would derive from the Levaci
mentioned by Julius Caesar or from the name of the legendary
Scottish prince Lupus, who is said to have founded the city, are no
longer considered a possibility. Some authors sought an explanation
in the Leuven slogan Altyd Praise God . In Leuven, according to this
view, during Antiquity, a Marempel would have stood. On the other
hand, according to the nineteenth-century view of Edward Van Even ,
Leuven came from two Germanic words: lo (forest) and ven (peat). For
example, Leuven would mean 'swamp in the forest', which immediately
describes the place where the city was established. Maurits
Gysselingfinally suggested that the name comes from the primordial
Germanic , where lubanja- means 'the beloved'.