Esztergom fell to the Ottomans in 1543, and the crossing fell with it. To hold its northern end they built a palisaded fort on this bank; the exiled Archbishop of Esztergom, Pál Várdai, reported the work in a letter dated 22 September 1546. The Ottomans called the fort Ciğerdelen, which means roughly 'liver-piercer'. A fort of that kind — a palisade with earth piled behind it — was called a parkan in the German of the day, and that word became the town's name for the next four hundred years: Parkan, Párkány in Hungarian. The town is named, in other words, after a Turkish fort with a German name.Roku 1543 padol Ostrihom do osmanských rúk a s ním aj prechod cez rieku. Aby Osmani udržali jeho severný koniec, postavili na tomto brehu palisádovú pevnôstku; ostrihomský arcibiskup Pál Várdai, ktorý žil v exile, o stavbe napísal v liste z 22. septembra 1546. Osmani ju volali Ciğerdelen, čo znamená približne „prebodávač pečene“. Takémuto opevneniu — palisáde s navŕšenou zemou — sa vtedy po nemecky hovorilo parkan, a práve toto slovo dalo mestu meno na ďalších štyristo rokov: Parkan, po maďarsky Párkány. Mesto je teda pomenované po tureckej pevnôstke s nemeckým názvom.
