Gakovo

Gakovo (Serbian Cyrillic: Гаково) is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Sombor municipality, in the West Bačka District, Vojvodina province. The village has a Serb ethnic majority and its population is 2,201 (2002 census).

Name

In Serbian, the village is known as Gakovo (Гаково), in German as Gakowa or Graumarkt, in Hungarian as Gádor or Gákova, in Croatian as Gakovo, and in Bunjevac as Gakovo. Name of the village is of Slavic (Serbo-Croatian) origin and roughly means "the place of Gako" or "the place of Gak".

Geography

Gakovo is located in north-western Bačka near the border with Hungary between the Tisa and Danube rivers. A small neighbouring settlement known as Kruševlje is also officially regarded as part of Gakovo. Gakovo lies at an altitude of 96 meters.

History

From 1658 name Gakovo was used for an uninhabited area that was under Ottoman administration. Village of Gakovo was formed during Habsburg administration in the first half of the 18th century. According to the sources, this village existed in 1728 and was populated by "Šijaks" (Serbs from Croatia). In 1748, some Austro-Hungarians (Danube Swabians) from Apatin and Kruševlje settled here as well and it was one of the first settlements in Bačka that was colonized by Austro-Hungarians. Another wave of Danube Swabian colonists came between 1763 and 1768. Some colonists were from the upper Danube region, Baden-Württemberg (Swabian), and Alsace-Lorraine (Alsatian), but some were from other areas of the Habsburg Monarchy such as Bohemia, Slovakia, Hungary, etc.