ALL OF THE BELGRADE NAMES

Belgrade has changed its name several times. The oldest preserved description of the city is from the ancient Greek myth about Jason and the Argonauts, later on the Roman name Singidunum was in use, as well as Singedon in early Byzantine times. The oldest preserved written mention of the Serbian name “Belgrad” is from a letter of  Pope John VIII to the Bulgarian prince Boris, in 878. Built of a light-colored local limestone above the confluence of two rivers and named by the Slavs “Beli Grad” (“White City”, due to their interpretation of the color of the walls ruins), its name kept being translated by its next conquerors: Alba Graeca, Griechisch Weissenburg, Nandor Alba, Nandor Fejervar, Castelbianco, Alba Bulgarica. The Ottoman Turks, however, nicknamed it “Dar Ul Jihad” (Place of Sacred War). Modern Serbs call their capital “BEOGRAD”. In English, obviously, that is “Belgrade”.

However, there is a different version of how Belgrade got its name, stressing a myth about some Ancient Serbs, allegedly having lived in SE Europe since more than 3000 years ago, who worshipped a supreme divinity they called BELBOG (White God), so that they founded a town on a hill above the Sava and Danube rivers confluence, which the Greeks in their above mentioned mythological tale called Kaulik, while the ancient Serbs named BEL GRAD, a town consecrated to their supreme BEL God. Allegedly, there had been a shipyard in town, where Jason with his followers had built the famous mythical wooden ship ARGO, which later on left Istar and sailed on Savus to finish its journey back to the Adriatic Sea – carried by Jason and the Argonauts through the Dinaric mountains!