Gemer (German: (rare) Gömer, Gemer; Hungarian: Sajógömör) is a village and municipality in Revúca District in the Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia.
Gemer (German: (rare) Gömer, Gemer; Hungarian: Sajógömör) is a village and municipality in Revúca District in the Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia.
János Melich associated Gemer with the Kyrgyz personal name Kemirbaj and old Turkish place name Kömürtag. This theory was adopted also by Lájos Kiss who explains the name from old Turkic kömür: coal.[1] However, Šimon Ondruš deemed the toponym is of slavic origin, a cognate of Slovak homoľa, altimately from Proto Slavic stem(*gom-ol-), which originally meant a lump and afterwards metaphorically a hill.[2]
Important Bronze Age finds have been made in the village. In historical records, the village was first mentioned in 1198 as Gomur (1216 Gumur, 1289 Gemer) as a settlement below the much older Gemer Castle (which was originally a Slavic fortified settlement). The castle was the capital of Gemer and control point of all the ways for Spiš County.
The settlement below the castle was a royal dominion and in the 14th century it became the capital of Gemer. It was besieged by the Bohemian condottiere Jiskra in the 15th century and it was pillaged by Turks in the 16th century. From 1938 to 1945 it belonged to Hungary under the First Vienna Award.
The records for genealogical research are available at the state archive "Statny Archiv in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia"
