The Mystery of Lviv’s Name

The aim of the presented essay was to find an answer to the question whether, when and who first gave the name to the defensive settlement founded in the mid-thirteenth century on the banks of the Poltva River, which today is one of the most famous cities of Ukraine - inscribed on the UNESCO list of cult girls - which is the city bearing the name: "Lviv" or "Lion's Castle" The author, completely negating the views of Ukrainian historians regarding both the origin of the name of this city and its coat of arms, so far considered to be fully credible, proves that its creation is closely related to the action initiated by Prince Daniel of Galicia, to build new defensive strongholds after the destruction that the troops of the descendants of Dzingis-Han made in Galicia and Volhynia in the years 1240-1241 on their way to the conquest of Western Europe. Based on the preserved sources, the author associates the creation of the first settlement, which in later years became the basis for the development of Lviv as one of the most important cities in Western Ukraine, directly with the arrival of German settlers from Silesia. It proves that it was THEY, not the Ruthenians, who gave this first settlement the name "Lion Mountain", both in order to preserve in the new place of their settlement the name of the place from which it approximates, but also consistent with the local landscape.  Lwów would also owe its original coat of arms identical with the former coat of arms of LOWENBERG created in 1217 in Lower Silesia (today known under the Polish name "Lwówek Śląski"), which over time became the coat of arms of the entire territory of the so-called "Lwów Land".  In the presented publication, the author tries to meticulously reconstruct the most probable events that took place in both the former March of Meissen in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the development of German settlement in Silesia in the first years of the thirteenth century and the action undertaken by Prince Daniel Romanowicz-Halych to build new defensive strongholds in the areas of former Kievan Rus after the Mongol invasions in 1240-1241.  The main basis of the proof remains both (here) the unusual (excluding chance) similarity of the existing local coats of arms successively given by the author and the similarity of the naming confirmed by the documents. Verification of the findings was supported by numerous footnotes using German, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian literature on both general history, sfragistics and etymology. The presented text is one of the chapters of the prepared monograph entitled _"Lviv re-read: the mystery of the origin of its coat of arms, the name and history of princely seals_" covering a comprehensive picture of the real history of the city in its initial period of existence: including the reasons for its creation, the choice of the place of foundation of the hillfort and its development until the end of the fourteenth century and the legend of the existence of the "_Ruthenian kingdom_" closely associated with it. ...