A historic Belgrade “square” (more like a short boulevard, comparable to Wenceslaus Square in Prague or Times Square in NYC) is called Terazije, which means ‘scales.’ (The word is from Turkish terazi, which is from Persian terâzu, from Middle Persian terâzug; if anyone has information about its further provenance, please let me know.) This is an odd name for a town square, but I would have assumed it was either populated by merchants or the site of a municipal weighing machine (like Trongate in Glasgow, tron being a Scots word for “a pair of scales or other machine for weighing merchandise; a public weighing apparatus in a city or (burgh) town” [OED])—but most sites that discuss its name claim that it comes from the Turkish name for a water tower that used to stand in it. This sounds implausible on the face of it, but “Marko Serb” in an Illyrium Forums discussion says “Two high ‘towers’—water collectors—were located here, resembling a scale (scales) and this is how the place got its name.” Which would explain it, if there were two such towers there and if they resembled a pair of scales and if that became the popular name. How is one to know? And other sites give the more obvious explanation (for instance, this one says “The word Terazije means ‘weighing scales’ in Turkish, and during some 400 years of Ottoman rule — and well into the 19th century — this was a street of merchants and craftsmen.” That’s more believable, but then why is the water-tower one so common? And shouldn’t the principle of Lectio difficilior potior favor the latter? What we need are facts, and facts are hard to come by when speculation is so easy and enjoyable.