Rehborn

Rehborn is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Nahe-Glan. Rehborn lies on the Glan between Meisenheim to the south and Odernheim am Glan to the north. The municipal area measures 1 014 ha Clockwise from the north, Rehborn's neighbours are the municipalities of Odernheim am Glan, Lettweiler, Unkenbach and Callbach, the town of Meisenheim and the municipalities of Raumbach and Abtweiler, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district but for Unkenbach, which lies in the neighbouring Donnersbergkreis. Also belonging to Rehborn are the outlying homesteads of Bahnposten 3061, Neuhaus and Schreckhof. Unearthed at a few vineyards in Rehborn have been plant and animal fossils from Rotliegend times in the Permian, some 290,000,000 years ago. Among the animal fossils that have been found are fishes, amphibians and reptiles. In the early 7th century, a new, small settlement began to grow between the Frankish centres of Odernheim and Meisenheim, Rehborn. In 1128, it had its first documentary mention as Robura. Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz (d. 1137) acknowledged to Disibodenberg Abbey those rights that it had already held in his predecessor Willigis’s time (975-1011). The village’s original name Robura comes from the Old High German ror, meaning "reed" and bur, meaning "house" (the latter word was cognate with the English word "bower"). This "house at the reeds" stood on the lands that are now Karl Neumann's, Erhard Wendel's and Karl Kerch's properties. Rural cadastral names still bear witness to it: "Brühl" (wet meadowland right near the manor house); "Hinner de Hufstatt" (or in standard German, "Hinter der Hofstätte" – gardens from the Brühl down to the Hüttenbach). Even though the village's name has nothing to do with either a spring (Brunnen in German or, less commonly, Born, but in either case cognate with the English word "bourne") or a roe deer (Reh in German, cognate with the English word "roe"), the mutation of the latter syllable into —born in speech had become the norm by the mid 16th century.