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Concept
Hoorn
Summary
Hoorn (ˈɦoːr(ə)n) is a city and municipality in the northwest of the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the largest town and the traditional capital of the region of West Friesland. Hoorn is located on the Markermeer, 20 kilometers (12 mi) east of Alkmaar and 35 kilometers (22 mi) north of Amsterdam. The municipality has just over 73,000 inhabitants and a land area of , making it the third most densely populated municipality in North Holland after Haarlem and Amsterdam. Apart from the city of Hoorn, the municipality includes the villages of Blokker and Zwaag, as well as parts of the hamlets De Bangert, De Hulk and Munnickaij.
Hoorn is well known in the Netherlands for its rich history. The town acquired city rights in 1357 and flourished during the Dutch Golden Age. In this period, Hoorn developed into a prosperous port city, being home to one of the six chambers of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, however, it started to become increasingly more difficult for Hoorn to keep competing with nearby Amsterdam. Ultimately, it lost its function as port city and became a regional center of trade, mainly serving the smaller villages of West Friesland. Nowadays, Hoorn is a city with modern residential areas and a historic city center that, due to its proximity to Amsterdam, is sometimes considered to be part of the Randstad metropolitan area. Cape Horn and the Hoorn Islands were both named after this city.
The origin of the name Hoorn – in archaic spelling Hoern, Horne or Hoirn(e) – is surrounded in myths. According to old Frisian legends, the name comes from Hornus, a bastard son of King Redbad and brother of Aldgillis II, who presumably founded the city in 719 and named it after himself. A different theory claims that the name was derived from a sign depicting a post horn, which hung from one of the taverns established by brewers from Hamburg in the early fourteenth century.
According to Hadrianus Junius, the name could also be a reference to the city's horn-shaped port.
Official source
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