| Chisinau - Moldova Art Gallery of Ghenadie Sontu. The name of Chsinau city comes from the archaic Romanian word chişla (meaning "spring", "source of water") and nouă ("new"), because it was built around a small spring. Nowadays, the spring is located at the corner of Pushkin and Albişoara streets. Chişinău is also known in Russian as Кишинёв (Kishinyov). It is written Kişinöv in the Latin Gagauz alphabet. It was also written as Кишинэу in the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet in Soviet times. Historically, the English language name for the city, "Kishinev," was based on the modified Russian one because it entered the English language via Russian at the time Chişinău was part of the Russian Empire (eg Kishinev pogrom). Therefore, it remains a common English name in some historical contexts. Otherwise, however, the Romanian-based "Chişinău" has been steadily gaining wider currency, especially in the written language. en.wikipedia.org |
