# Croatian (BCS): Marchfield



## sauge

Hello!

At the moment I'm struggling with a name of a place, it is Marchfield, where Frankish rulers mustered their armies before battles every spring. 
So, first I thought it meant "the field of the month of March", "Ožujsko polje" (sounds awkward). 

Then I came across "Upper March" and "Lower March" in Spain, and found that it is the medieval "marka", or "krajina", region that served to protect the central area of a kingdom. (Austria used to be "Eastern March" of Karolingian kingdom, if I remember well).

But the question is, of course, how to transpose it into Croatian. And I'm not even sure I'm right about this marka thing, maybe it is March after all? "Ožujsko/Martovsko polje" being discarded, I'm a bit without solutions.

Do you happen to know...?

Thanks!


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## slavic_one

Maybe name comes from "marching field".


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## sauge

maybe. "marširno polje"? hm.


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## Duya

That was my first association, too.

Maybe "marševsko"? I'm not sure if it's completely synonymous with "marširno" or there are different nuances in meaning.


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## sauge

Maybe it is, indeed. "Marševsko polje" would mean a field where soldiers march, which all but covers the meaning of a military gathering place. 

(It is frustrating when you have to transpose a historic name from English into such a small language as BCS; too few sources, references.... I'm strongly tempted to invent my own solution here. But, of course, I can't without checking all possible literature... Tedious work. Thank you, folks!)


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## sokol

'March' (pronounced 'marh' in BCS spelling ) originally meant farmland border in general, the term 'Mark' = 'borderlands' is derived from this.
The 'Marchfield' of your Franconian kings surely would have been 'Marchfeld' in German.

Thus I think that 'krajina' would work fine if you really want to translate this: 'Feld' only was translated to English because with 'Feld' the meaning still is very much clear in German, but with 'March' this is no longer the case and probably wasn't even at the time of the Franconian kings as this 'Marchfeld' most likely was already a fixed toponym of which only the second part made any sense to natives.

So you could go for 'marhopolje' (or any other combination of 'marh' + 'polje', whatever looks good to a native speaker), or if you must then for 'krajinsko polje'.


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## sauge

Hey, hey, hey, this is just what I need! 

(I don't really want to translate anything, for that matter, but since my God-blessed American author has put this _field_ into his text, he leaves me no choice. )

"Krajina" will be fantastic! Or "krajiško polje"; or... I'll know what to google now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!


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## sokol

You're welcome.


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