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. Qeios, CC-BY 4.0 · Article, December 14, 2022 Qeios ID: CN4AP4 · https://doi.org/10.32388/CN4AP4 1/90 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. ...

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. ... to the rules considered standard in Europe at the time -there still seems to be an intriguing question, although one which seems to be completely ignored, both in academic and public discussions, about the origin of its name and, more specifically, about its authenticity.

THE MYSTERY OF LVIV'S NAME
For -rightly or wrongly -in the opinion of some of those who analyse the problem of the emergence and perpetuation of toponyms in the public consciousness Lwów in fact remains the only example of a city (of those which for over 400 years remained in close connection with the Polish Kingdom) which does not in fact have its "founding legend"... 3 Is this really the case? Or is it possible to find a clue to this legend, lost in the memory of past generations, in the fragments of the town's history which have survived, and with it to restore the town's original name to human memory, thus making the actual date of its birth more realistic -only that it must have taken place during the lifetime of Daniel Romanowicz-Halicki and before the fire -by his will and order -of Chełm, which took place in 1256. This is not an idle question. In the history of human civilisation we have experienced too often that what seemed to be an obvious fact, an unquestionable dogma, with the passing of time turned out to be only one of the subsequent illusions, Qeios, CC-BY 4.0 · Article,  Gvagin's account -as the coat of arms of the Halych principality was identical to the Halych coat of arms and also remained the coat of arms of the Halych Land as we see it on its banner at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 already as : "a crowned jackdaw with extended wings in a red field...". 36 (Fig.7) although there are polemical voices on this issue as well. 37 *** The figure of the lion as a symbol of "strength and righteousness", which has existed from the very beginnings of knightly heraldry in Europe since the end of the 12th century, appears in the 13th century both as an individual, territorial and national emblem in countless forms of presentation. It is therefore impossible not to notice numerous borrowings or evento use our contemporary language -obvious plagiarism. 38 Thanks also to the German merchant factories in Novgorod and the direct contacts of Andrey Bogolubsky, the ruler of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, with Frederick I Barbarossa, the heraldic lion arrived in north-eastern Rus' already in the first half of the 12th century, to survive there in its original form fixed on the contemporary image of the Vladimir coat of arms. 39  lion climbing or supported on its edge . From this point of view, it seems to represent a SPECIAL case in the whole known history of European heraldry being (in its notation) a "two-headed" coat of arms. (Fig.10) This "peculiarity" is in fact not without significance for the entire history of Ukrainian heraldry if we consider that J. B.
Zimorowicz, uncritically regarded as an authority not only on the history of the founding of the city, but also on the possible origin of its coat of arms, stated that the primary sign closely related to Lviv was a lion which at the same timeaccording to Zimorowicz -MAY have been a lion.B. Zimorowicz, on the basis of a source known only to himself (?), stated that the primary sign closely associated with Lviv was the figure of a lion, which at the same time -according to Zimorowicz -MAY have also been the heraldic sign of Lev Danilovich… 43 This is probably also what the authors of a contemporary Ukrainian history textbook for the 7th grade of primary schools 44 have followed, as indicated by the 17th century chronicler, who have unknowingly (?) made the "Prague penny" of Václav II, i.e. from the time corresponding to the reign of Lev Danilovich, into an alleged "heraldic sign" of his son George (Yuri) Lvovich ( Fig.15) 45 .      Other authors, on the other hand, in one text are ready to prove at the same time that this coat of arms could be the " twoheaded eagle" (referring to the authority of A. Petrusewicz) preserved in the coat of arms of the city of Przemyśl 61 or the "lion" whose image most probably must have been chosen by Daniel Halicki as his sign on the day of his coronation in 1253. 62 It is also quite unexpected that the undisputed authority for Ukrainian historians to assess whether the seals with  .6a) the lion has its left leg raised, and on the other extant "models" it does not seem to have raised any leg ( fig.16 a-c). In addition to this apparently "ambiguous" interpretation concerning both the image of the lion in the coat of arms and the time of origin of the Romanovich family coat of arms (?), there is another mystery related directly to the alleged seal of Yuri Lvovich, for which it is difficult to find a model in the seals of other princely families in the former Kievan Rus'. 69 There are, however, seals in Europe at that time with an identical ideological message both in the image of the lion on the shield and in the alleged pennant, which seems to indicate either a "pan-European" fashion for "lions" in knightly signs of that time or -which seems to be an unacceptable supposition for Ukrainian historians -a common seal mark of these or a similar one, fixed in the image on the reverse of the seal attributed to Yuriy Lvovich , an imitation. (Fig.17a-d) (Fig.18ad). 70 This also seems to refer to the discrepancies among Ukrainian scholars as to the origin of the one-sided seal preserved in a letter from the German municipality of Vladimir Volynsky to the municipal authorities of Straslund from 1324, interpreted -according to some -as the territorial coat of arms of the municipality or -according to others -as the coat of arms of the Volyn principality or the personal coat of arms of the ruling prince. The latter version, however, seems to confirm the presumption that the coat of arms of the so-called "Russian kingdom", already in use as an official state emblem (?), in fact refers only to the former Duchy of Halych, i.e. (generally) to the territory commonly identified with the so-called Western Ukraine, Red Russia or the "Galicia" already mentioned here. (Fig.19a-b) (Fig.20) 71 In the established 19th century transmission (Fig.12), this coat-of-arms sign of "Lodomeria" is after all (visible on the coloured version of this composition) a knight on horseback with a pennant bearing the sign of a red cross on a white background, while in the official version of the "reading" of this pennant (from the reverse side of the "royal" seal) this pennant has only a tripartite horizontal division, which seems to suggest possibly only its tricolour(?) 72 .            He proves that the heraldic mark of the Romanovichs was not an image of a lion, but -derived from the Rurikikovichs' "trident" mark -a "bident" with an element of a Christian cross preserved on the image of the house seal which he attributes to the person of Lev Yurevich (Fig.22 a-c) 84,85,86 If Yaroslav Knisz is right that the ancestral mark of the Romanovichs was the " two-horned" 87   only be a logical consequence of the process of transferring the figure of the lion "climbing the mountain" to the image of the lion as "guardian" of the already -after the location process was completed in 1356 -fully formed city, which became (thus) "Lion Mountain" from "Lion Castle" ie: Lemburg. 89,90 What is the origin of the rump (as it is commonly called) of the " Russian Lion", which has no equivalent in any other sign known in European heraldry: a lion climbing or ( as others write) "leaning" on a rock? What is the actual origin of this toponym? ....Is it really connected with a specific person -as it is commonly believed after Gruneweg 91 and Zimorowicz or is it a toponym of a place and a CONCRETELY defined place ? ***  The key to solving the riddle concerning the origin of the Lvov coat of arms became for Filipov HIS German-language name appearing in royal documents after 1360 in two varieties: "Lamburg" or "Lemburg" 99 . (as he puts it) the "symbols" and "signs" of the WPROST known to them from their places of origin to their new places of residence.  Although the lack of any illustration in Filipov's published text makes it difficult to assess the value of his hypothesis, certain similarities can be found in this comparison, particularly in the association of the lion's silhouette directly with the person of Henryk 103 although -according to German historians -the lion on the Braunschweig seal, which is closest in appearance to the city seal of Lvov, is not a symbolic representation of the duke, but is a copy of the "lion of Brunswick", which is the symbol of the entire duchy and at the same time its territorial sign. 104 (Fig.24,Fig.25).
Following this line of thought, one can only add -according to the author's thesis -that the "model" for both the image of the lion as the alleged family sign of the Romanowicz family and the lion silhouette on the seal of the Lviv jurors ( Fig. 3.b ) could also be (also?) the coat of arms of Henryk Lion 105 (Fig.25a) or -modelled on his seal -the coat of arms of Szwerin from 1298 106,107 ( fig.23b), or a lion silhouette from another bracelet minted by him, the existence of which, however, is not mentioned by Filipov ( fig.9.5) 108 . suggest -its location already during the rule of Lev Danilovich. 109 Taking into account -following Leontyi Woytowycz -the fact that: German settlers arriving in Ruthenia at the invitation of Daniel and Leo I enjoyed full freedom to cultivate their customs and even acceptance of their religion 110 "Lev Brunschwicki" would have had to -in order to become a "Lion of Lion" -"arrived" on the river Poltva together with the "Bavarians" in the form in which this alleged coat of arms was already established in 1231. This, in turn, is closely linked to the date of its -as a city -location.

***
In another version presented by Andrei Ganzhe, the image of a lion climbing a rocky slope (as we know it from the view of the "territorial mark" of the Lviv region) is, according to Ganzhe, only a reproduction of the coat of arms of Daniel Romanovich-Halitski, which Daniel must have adopted before his coronation day, i.e. on the day he was knighted. This "Galician lion" coat of arms thus became the family mark of the Romanovichs. However, it is neither the "Przemysl" double-headed eagle fixed on a "pole" near Chełm -as some historians suggest -nor the "Truzub" sign, as Ganzha seeks its origin not in the Germanic lands but in the Kingdom of Sweden. According to Ganzha, the coat of arms of the Swedish royal dynasty of the Folkung family is supposed to be the prototype of Daniel's coat of arms. This is because it is supposed to be a DIRECT expression of the family relationship (!) between Daniel Romanowicz and the Folkung family.
This blood relation in the identity of the "family sign" is in fact due to the fact -as Ganzhe goes on to demonstrate -that Despite also quite similar images of lions in German heraldry (Fig.26b-c) this trope is not explored by Andrei Ganzhe, consistently staying on the "Scandinavian thread" .  The Polish historian and author of the third hypothesis presented here, Jacek Gaj, who has extensively researched the history of early-medieval settlement in the area known as "Grody Czerwieńskie" (Red Ruthenian strongholds) and the history of Lwów itself, concludes with a dramatic question in the final part of his study, accepting as indisputable the name of Lwów, which has been polonised to "Lvov": "How, then, was the lion, which was included in the first historical coat of arms of Lviv in the 14th century, known to those who had previously given the city its name? if the animal was not, as Gaj believes, known to the inhabitants and as a species never existed on the territory of Rus.
Based on this assumption, Gaia searches for the origin of the city's symbol not in Bavaria, as Filippow does, or in Scandinavia, but directly at the source, in Central Asia, specifically in Palestine. Going back to the time of the "Crusades", he finds a "Hungarian trace" in the person of King Andrew II of Hungary, who was to command the fifth expedition that took place between 1217 and 1222.
Quoting the Armenian historian Sadok Baracz, who is known for his rather uncritical use of various types of apocrypha, he claims that "a settlement (which would be located on the site of present-day Lviv) called "Ilowe" had already existed since at least 1183, as evidenced by the date a wooden church was built there that year.
Since "Lwów" in Hungarian is precisely "Ilowe", it is clear to Gaia that Lwów as it then stood must have been founded by settlers coming from Hungary or directly by Hungarian knights after their return from some crusade even earlier than the expedition of Andrew II. Hence the simple conclusion that it must have been obvious to them that their new place of residence or temporary stay should have had the "Jerusalem" symbol of the lion -the "Lion of Judah" (Fig.28).  However, the lack of consistency in this matter also led to a situation in which: a) the symbol of the Russian kingdom, being an image of a lion with its tail turned upwards, which contradicts the lion's engraving on the alleged seal of George (Yuri) Lvovich 124 and therefore suggests a copy of one of the images of lions known in European heraldry and, together with the removal of the image of the rock -must give rise to the suspicion that we are dealing here with a PROPAGANDA -a coat of arms -for purely political purposes -completely fabricated". must give rise to the suspicion that we are dealing here with a PROPAGANDA coat of arms -a coat of arms -FOR CLEARLY POLITICAL PURPOSES -completely fabricated", b) IN FOLLOWING, the coat of arms with a lion supported by a rock, adopted in the form known from the coat of arms of the "Ruthenian Voivodeship" for the purpose of symbolising the (now) Ukrainian "Lviv region", has -as yet -no ideological or, even less, iconographic connection with any previously established compositional model in Kievan Rus', remaining -as it may be assumed -a local and wholly original creation.  There are even claims in academic forums that the introduction of the "cantilevered lion" into the city coat of arms was a deliberate "polonisation" of this original -indigenously Ukrainian -design. At the same time -in a straightforward accusation of an INTENTIONAL forgery by the Poles -Ukrainian historians are not bothered by the fact that "both" of these seals seem to be linked by a common temporal inscription (which is, after all, in their surroundings) in German or in "Germanised" Latin.
d) The problem of the connection between the two (both territorial and municipal) coats of arms and the origin of the city's name is not debatable from the CLEAR fact that -in Ukrainian historiography -it is stated that (according to established tradition) the city's name comes directly from the name of King Daniel's son Lev Danilovich.
In the same way, it could also be argued that the city seals of Göttingen or Biedenkopf, similar to but much earlier than the Lviv city seal, with the image of a lion walking in the gate, should also have their toponyms directly associated with this animal or even derive from them the MODEL of the Lviv city seal (Fig. 32a-c).

3.2.
Variant to the officially valid version of the origin of coats of arms, the three successive hypotheses presented are united by a common thread: the borrowing or transfer of a pattern from another country or person in a narrower (municipal coat of arms only) or broader (territorial mark) sense.
This alone puts them in stark opposition to the current message in Ukrainian historiography, behind which are important authorities in the study of Ukrainian history. 129 In spite of their obvious naivety, these hypotheses did not even become the subject of any assessment or polemics, remaining completely ignored by "professional" scientists, not mindful of the fact that they themselves, in their still-open hypotheses, still readily refer to the self-taught 18th century dilettantes who, writing their first "scientific" papers, mainly relied on common knowledge stored in the fleeting and often "perverse" human memory, relying on their "findings" as dogmas not subject to any verification.
But irrespective of their varying degrees of probability, the version presented by Andrei Ganzhe appears to be a straightforward attempt to complement the official version when the other two are its obvious NEGATION. All other images of both municipal and territorial coats of arms remain secondary to the above-mentioned and therefore cannot constitute a basis for verification of the above-mentioned.

***
In order to clarify their genesis and the real source of their origin, it seems necessary to find answers to four -in this respect -key questions for the further argument: a. When could the seal with the family mark of the Romanovichs or its original have been created if the seals known to us from those preserved in Königsberg are ONLY "copies" of the seal actually attributed to Daniel Halicki?
b. Is the image of a lion leaning against a rock a completely original local creation (as claimed by most Ukrainian historians) or is there a similar or identical coat of arms of another territory, city or person that predates the "Lviv" coat of arms and, if so, what could the two coats of arms have in common?
c. whether the name of the town, recorded on the municipal seal of 1359 as " Lemberg" -is this town's original name -"directly" recorded in the content of this coat of arms -or is the image of a lion "supported" or "climbing" a rock in the territorial coat of arms here a "purely coincidental" connection (relationship). (Fig.6) (Fig.18d)    Therefore, building also other "numerous" new "towns It is impossible to deny that he also invited new settlers to these "cities" in order to strengthen the state and defend it against the next Mongol invasion. All the information recorded in various chronicles of neighbouring countries seems to indicate that they came mainly from Saxony or Silesia... Could they also have brought with them the coat of arms of the "land of Lwów" already known to us from the description of J.  There has been an open debate for years as to the exact date of the founding of Lviv's city. 141 No one doubts that Lwow owes its foundation to the disappearance from the pages of history of the nearby site of the later (?) location of Lwow and the Dzvinogród that existed until 1241. 142   Although the very act of founding the town -whether it was as early as 1209 or as late as 1217 -is still controversial to this day 159 there is no doubt that at about this time the beginnings of the town already existed -a town operating under Magdeburg law and which was given the name "Lówenberg" (Lion Mountain). 160 Although the fact that it was founded by people who came from Germany at that time is obvious, the tradition of the origin of the name has also acquired its own legendary thread, tinged with local colour, over time. 161 There was also no shortage of analyses bordering on Slavic studies in connection with the visually perceived "lack of direct connection of the town's name with the surrounding landscape". , deriving the toponym from the "customary" interchangeable supposed use in the local "dialect?" of the German "burg" with the similar-sounding word "berg"… 162 .

A.M.Szymski
It is also one of the few towns in the world which, unlike Z toryja 163 Gryfowa kie 164  One of the unquestionable attractions of the choice of the location of Silesian Lówenberg was the nearby area of the already discovered gold deposits 169 located in the shallow ground layer and thus easy to exploit, and the possibility of locating here -at the crossing of the river Bóbr -one of the many "commercial centres" that were established along the main road leading from west to east in Europe known as the "via Regia" -the royal road -which had existed since Roman times. 170 (Fig.37  We also know -thanks to this information -that the times of "golden prosperity" in the Silesian Lowenberg ended with the exhaustion of the nearby deposits of gold-bearing sand at the end of the 13th century 171 and that the town, which in 1329 would have numbered almost 11,000 inhabitants 172 based its main existence on the function of a "merchant's house" and the work of clothiers, remaining (at least in the times of the Jawor Principality) one of the two main residence towns of this principality for its ruler.
It is, however, impossible to prove beyond doubt why any part of the population of this town or the surrounding villages should decide to continue their migration to the east, although the fact that the gold-bearing sand was running out may have been one such reason for some of the former miners (who were deprived of their primary source of income), along with increasing overcrowding in the town itself.
But it is also undeniable that, despite the fact that the distance to Kiev was quite considerable 173  But the Silesian Lvivenberg itself was founded not by native inhabitants but by newcomers "from the West". Where did those who would later bring these traditions to Lviv come from, specifically to settle here, and what traditions were they continuing?  176 The cited sources 177 point to two possible search leads: Meissen and Freienberg -both towns located in the then Meissen Marche, which in fact seems to be more indicative of the territory itself than the specifically named places, which in the preserved symbolism of their seals seem to be united only by the ancestral sign of the Wettin family 178 who took over the rule of the Marche after 1243 (Fig.39a-b), although the image of the ascending lion seems to have accompanied the history of the Meissen Marche from the very beginning of its foundation (Fig.40 a-   Lowenberg in Silesia was called Lowenstein (together with the castle next to which it was founded), which can be translated as "stone" or "Lion's rock". 179 (Fig.41)

Fig.41. Lauenstejn (Lówen-stein) on a fragment of a 19th century map of the Eastern Ore Mountains region
Its original symbol -reconstructed (?) years later -was a lion climbing a rocky mountainside, as can be seen, among other things, from a bas-relief in the wall of the railway station building which was renovated in 1938. (Fig.42). 180 Qeios, CC-BY 4.0 · Article, December 14, 2022 Qeios ID: CN4AP4 · https://doi.org/10.32388/CN4AP4 53/90 The presumption of randomness also rules out the coincidence of time and place. The information recorded in the old chronicles forms a logical whole. If it is to be assumed that the miners from the Ore Mountains who were recruited to go to Silesia set off on their journey eastwards from Frajberg or Meissen (as the chronicler wishes to say) 184 then, when founding a new settlement on the Silesian Beaver, they chose as their symbol the "Lówenstein's" lion, and combined this with the name of their new settlement, which was fully identical with such a coat of arms. 185 And their descendants, who decided to move on, took this name and coat of arms with them as a "sign of their identity". (Fig.46a-b)   Fig.46 a- This "unbelievable" resemblance of the coat of arms of a castle almost 1,300 km from Lviv, located not far from the later city of Dresden, which still stands on one of the hills of the Eastern Ore Mountains, dating back to the 11th or perhaps even the end of the 10th century, together with the adjacent town with the contemporary name of Lauenstein (Lavenstein) 189 , rules out mere coincidence. 190 Qeios, CC-BY 4.0 · Article, December 14, 2022 Qeios ID: CN4AP4 · https://doi.org/10.32388/CN4AP4 56/90 The fact that there is no other similar coat of arms linking a lion to a rocky mountainside in all European heraldry known to us today seems only to underline its originality attributed to the place of its birth. 191,192 The image of a lion leaning against a rock is also a unique SIGN here and for another reason. It has connected (through the identity of its image) only three places, marking (also) the paths of the Saxon settlers who migrated successively from the Meissen area and their "ancestral homeland" assigned to it. : from the former Lowenstain via Lewenberg (in Lower Silesia) leading us to the place of Lemberg's birth -Lowenberg on the river Poltva. Most specialists involved in the study of the history of the origin of the names of existing human settlements agree on the view that they were most often named either after specific features of the place in which they were established or (directly?) after the name of their founder.
Although there are also cases known when owners took (borrowed) the name of their family from a pre-existing name of a village or urban settlement, a toponym directly deriving the name from a feature of the location seems to be the most natural of all names. It was a kind of "signpost" at a time when maps did not yet exist or when their level of detail was more like a "road sketch" drawn up by the cartographers of the time (early medieval cartographers) by "hearsay". It was also easy to remember and understand by the inhabitants living there (as well as in the immediate vicinity) -such is the case with the names of Bełz, Chełm, Przemyśl or Sanok .
In turn, there is no doubt that the names of such towns as Vladimir (called Volynsky and the other Vladimir on the Klazma) or Danilov derive their names directly from the founding princes. Another (although also related to the "name") type of toponym is connected with the name of cities such as Krakow, Kiev or, founded only in the 17th century, Kharkov, whose names are derived from legendary characters: Krak , Kiev and Kharko.
What kind of toponym, then, is the name of the city recorded on the pages of numerous documents preserved in various archives from medieval chronicles (latopis) to the present day, and which in the Polish language transmission bears the name "Lvov". -itself untranslatable if one does not take into account the fact that this name is in fact a simple linguistic carbon copy of the Russian "Львов". 195,196 There seems to be no dispute on this point, at least among Ukrainian historians: "as is well known" Lwów takes its name from its founder, Lev Danielevich.
Since it was first formulated by Zimorovich, this view seems to have been one of the main CANONS (leitmotifs) around which the entire "story" of the Halych-Volyn principality and its SYMBOLIC to prove the "Ukrainian identity" of Lviv, supposedly also the ONLY capital of the Russian Kingdom, has been consistently built up in Ukrainian historiography (for over 150 years now). 197 In this context, it is not so much the coat-of-arms itself (which is a secondary element and a "graphic sign" derived from the name), but above all the NAME of the city that determines its (according to Ukrainian historians) national IDENTITY. 198 In essence, then, this problem boils down to the question of what does the word " Lviv" really express in its semantic layer knowledge of the history of Lviv. So far, however, this evidence (in fact) still remains EXCLUSIVE: "conjecture". 200 The popular version of the thesis of the origin of the city's toponym can be reduced to the succinct statement: "Lviv - The above is supposed to lend credence (among other things) to the famous inscription on the Halytska Tower 202 which, however, as evidence may be just as reliable as the statement by Michał Baliński (whose authority is in turn invoked by the author of the entry "Львів" in the Ukrainian Wikipedia 203 ) , who bases this view on -as he writes: " common (in this matter) opinion" 204 If, however, J.Rudnicki 205 that the original name of Lwów was not "Львов" but "Львов город", then -irrespective of the author's intentions -this would mean that the name Lwiw 206 (both as Russian: "Львов" or Ukrainian: "Львів" ) is later and that the German Lemburg or Lemberg is earlier than the name "Lwiw", and not only because of the identity of these names (Lev's castle / Lev's mountain) but because of a later (?) transformation of the Ruthenian (Old Slavic) two-word form into a one-word form: recorded by Zimorowicz in its phonetic form as "Lwihorod" -which in itself does not express (contain) the name of the prince, but the proper name of the "lion" and in the Polish translation means only a synonym of the "lion (resilient, strong, predatory) city". 207 Despite the lack of in-depth linguistic analysis 208   The various names of the hills repeated today on numerous community forums for "Lviv lovers", together with the accompanying legends -composed at the discretion of their authors -add to this information noise, thus "moving" the site of the first princely "dietinca" from one hill to another or -at the same time -erecting princely castles on three hills at once: "ducal", "budelnica" and "lion" -at his own discretion. 224 This confusion of names was also repeated -without even a hint of reflection -by Stanislav Chernikov 225 in his text entitled "The mysteries of Lysá hora", written on 12 February 2021.
It is therefore all the more important to restore the place of this (allegedly "Łysa" or "Piaskowa") and eternally enshrined in legend Lions' Mountain 226 so that it can once again become the true symbol of the city, permanently (already ) enshrined in its original name and coat of arms -with the predatory lion remaining its (no longer ONLY mountain, but the entire city) guardian to this day. (Fig.48) It can thus be said that the question posed by A. Szyszke in 1996: " when did the name Lviv come into being" 227 has finally been answered to some extent.     2 Particularly "meritorious" in this respect seem to be all kinds of chroniclers of clerical origin, for whom every piece of information -regardless of its degree of reliability -seems worthy of immortalisation as long as it serves "God's good".
Thus (Leon) Szeptycki. Another (local) version is the information that the painting was originally supposed to be in the meeting room of the Lviv city council (in the building of the city hall), and completely darkened from old age, it was to be given to