Bucur (legendary shepherd)

Bucur is the legendary Romanian shepherd who is said to have founded Bucharest, giving it his name.

While the legend about the shepherd is probably apocryphal, the name of the city (Romanian: București) is actually quite likely derived from a person named Bucur, as the suffix -ești is used for settlements derived from personal names, usually of the owner of the land or of the founder, though it is more likely that Bucur was the noble who owned the land.

Another early reference is found in An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, an 1820 book published in London by the English consul in Bucharest, William Wilkinson.

The earliest reference to Bucur's Church is from a geography manual written by Iosif Gentilie in 1835.

[3] There are various other etymologies given by early scholars for the city name, including the one of Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi, who said Bucharest is named after a certain Abu-Kariş, from the tribe of Bani-Kureiș, and that of an early 19th-century book published in Vienna, where it is assumed its name is derived from Bukovie, a beech forest.