This town is named after a building. Its church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the Latin Sancta Maria wore down through Zent Maria, Samaria and Somorja into the Slovak Šamorín — the name is the church, repeated for eight hundred years. The building itself is a rarity, a four-aisled Romanesque hall and one of the oldest churches on the island, although historians disagree about when it went up: some place it as early as the eleventh century, others in the second half of the thirteenth. Around it grew a settlement of ferrymen, fishermen and market traders on the bank of the Danube.Toto mesto je pomenované podľa stavby. Jeho kostol bol zasvätený Panne Márii a latinské Sancta Maria sa cez tvary Zent Maria, Samaria a Somorja obrúsilo na slovenské Šamorín — meno je vlastne kostol, opakovaný osemsto rokov. Samotná stavba je vzácnosť: štvorloďový románsky kostol, jeden z najstarších na ostrove, hoci historici sa nezhodujú, kedy vznikol — jedni ho kladú už do 11. storočia, druhí až do druhej polovice 13. storočia. Okolo neho vyrástla osada prievozníkov, rybárov a trhovcov na brehu Dunaja.
