Talk:Longyearbyen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

So...what does Longyearbyen mean? My guess is "Town of the Long Year", but the article says it was named after John Longyear, which is English...so is it "The Longyear Town"? Does anyone know? Tomer TALK 21:39, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Yes indeed. The Longyear guy founded the place, the first years it was called "Longyear City". Then Spitsbergen became norwegian and they changed "City" to the norwegian word "Byen".
"byen" means "the town". In Norwegian, the definite article goes at the end. "en by" = "a town", "byen = the town".
Strictly speaking, byen, is the city/town. In Norwgian it can mean either.

I changed the first line to read "population of about 1900" from 1700 based on the Gov. of the Islands official website. rhmoore 08:49, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/o/n/Talk%7ELongyearbyen_cab8.html"