History of Bern

The city of Bern, founded in 1191 and first mentioned in a document in 1208, grew to become the biggest city-state north of the Alps and a major power in the Old Swiss Confederacy. The former extent of Bern included the cantons of Bern, Vaud and large parts of Aargau.

Since 1848, Bern has been the Federal City (capital) of Switzerland.

The etymology of the name Bern is uncertain. Local legend has it that Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, the founder of the City of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt; as this turned out to be a bear, the city had both its name and its heraldic beast. However, the connection between Bern and Bär (bear) is a folk etymology. It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern in Middle High German.

The Bern zinc tablet, which was found in the 1980s, indicates that the former oppidum′s possible Celtic name Brenodor was still known in Roman times. Since that time, it has been supposed that Bern may be a corruption (folk-etymological re-interpretation) of the older, similar-sounding Celtic name. The etymology of the Celtic would be related to the Middle Irish word berna ‘gap, chasm’ (cf. Irish bearna, Scottish beàrn).

In the late medieval period, Berne was very strongly identified with its heraldic animal, which was used as an allegory of the military and feudal power of the canton within the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Bernese citizen-soldiers were depicted as armed bears, and from at least the 16th century also referred to as mötz, motzlin, a dialectal word for "bear". This term became Mutz in the modern language, and was in the 19th century applied to the city or canton (as a political or military power) itself. The city of Berne was also jestingly referred to as Mutzopolis.

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