Eupen

From German Eupen and French Eupen, from Middle Dutch Oepen. See German Eupen below for more.

Eupen

1. A city in the province of Liège in Belgium; the capital of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.

From Middle Dutch Oepen. See German Eupen below for more.

• IPA^(key): /øːpə(n)/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Eu‧pen

Eupen n

1. Eupen, A town in German-speaking Community, province of Liège, Belgium

• Eupenaar
• Eupens

From Middle Dutch Oepen, Oipen, Oupen, Open. According to the prevalent theory from Proto-West Germanic *opan (“open”). The Middle Dutch spellings indeed seem to point to a back vowel; on the other hand there is no certainty about this and the modern front-rounded vowel would remain unexplained. An alternative theory derives it from *up (“up, at the top”) + *-īn. This explains the umlaut, but is still at odds with the dialectal pronunciation [ˈøˑʏ̯pə] ~ [ˈøːpə], which would require West-Germanic au-. Therefore a third theory postulates an underlying *Aupīn, in which *aup- would be a blend of *auwju (“floodplain”) with the hydronym *apa-.

The spelling in Eu- appears in the 16th century and is probably a Franco-Flemish representation of [øː]. The contemporary Standard German pronunciation may to some degree be a spelling pronunciation, but it also approaches the local [øˑʏ̯], which moreover generally corresponds to standard eu, äu.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɔʏ̯pən/

• Audio

  (file)

Eupen n (proper noun, genitive Eupens or (optionally with an article) Eupen)

1. A town in German-speaking Community, province of Liège, Belgium

• Eupener

• Boileau, Armand: Toponymie dialectale germano-romane du nord-est de la province de Liège, Les Belles Lettres, 1971, p. 117
• Niemeyer, Manfred: Deutsches Ortsnamenbuch, De Gruyter, 2012, p. 168