[Jonny foreigner]

Wiktionary.de gives several theories, the first of which is that the name does indeed come from an archaic form of “eastern empire” :

Herkunft:
[1] um 996 n. Chr. als Ostarrîchi bezeichnet, was sich wahrscheinlich aus der damaligen Bezeichnung für Osten und dem Begriff für „eingegrenztes Gebiet“ (-rîchi) ableitet. Es gibt auch Theorien, dass sich der Name Österreichs von dem Namen Ostara, der germanischen Göttin des Frühlings und der Morgenröte (Osten) ableitet oder aber slawischen Ursprungs ostarik, ostrik - Spitzberg ist.

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this is exactly what was confusing me. there are so many theories i guess no one can say today which one exactly did fit. i guess it has been a mix of local language (even this differed from time to time,) different political and territory conflicts. (goes even back to the romans...) but last but not least it was named österreich. why? i guess we will never know for shure. but then again who really cares. i still like living here.
greetings

[ccmay]

i guess we will never know for shure. but then again who really cares. i still like living here.

Now, that's a good attitude. I'm not surprised that you like it there.

How did you discover our little right-wing American playground?

-ccm