Geoagiu is a town in
Hunedoara CountyHunedoara is a county of Romania, in Transylvania, with its capital city at Deva.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 485,712 and the population density was 69/km².*Romanians - 92%*Hungarians - 5%*Romas - 2%*Germans under 1%....
,
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, located on the
MureşThe Mureș is an approximately 761 km long river in Eastern Europe. It originates in the Hășmașu Mare Range in the Eastern Carpathian Mountains, Romania, and joins the Tisza river at Szeged in southeastern Hungary....
river at an altitude of 217 meters over the sea level. The river with the same name (Geoagiu) flows in this place into the Mureş. The town has a population of about 6,500. It administers ten villages: Aurel Vlaicu (formerly
Binţinţi), Băcâia, Bozeş, Cigmău, Gelmar, Geoagiu-Băi, Homorod, Mermezeu-Văleni, Renghet and Văleni.
History
The first settlements in the area can be found in the time of the
DaciaIn ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks—the branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range...
ns, in the 1st century BC, as shown by archeological discoveries. After the Roman conquest, the Romans the fort of
Germinsana in the 2nd century, however, it kept the original Dacian name.
The name of
Germisana meant "hot water" (
germi = "heat",
sara = "waterfall") and it showed that the Dacians already knew of the thermal springs of the area.
Another opinion that the name came from the Hungarian name of the river Gyógy which means "curative". But more probably, the name is coming from the Hungarian word
dió (nut as fruit) with the suffix -d, so, after the first documentary citation, "villa Gyog" from 1291 appeared as Dyod és Dyog (1397), Aldyogh (1407), Algyogh (1412), Aldyod (1439), Alsodyod alio nomine Alsoffalwa (around 1444).
The first documentary citation of Geoagiu (it was written as "villa Gyog") was in the year 1291, when it was used as a land in the vicinity of
Bintinti (now the village
Aurel Vlaicu).