In 1315 King Charles Robert granted the place called Likava to Donč, his župan — the king's chief officer in a county, with its castles, taxes and courts under him — in Liptov and Zvolen. A village of that name was already there; the stone castle came later, and the sources put its building in the second half of the 1330s, on the rock directly above the road. So the castle took its name from the village below it, and not the other way round, which is a useful reminder that a first written mention is a fact about a surviving document, not about when people arrived. What the castle was for was traffic: timber and cattle went down the Váh, salt and goods came up, and everything could be stopped, counted and taxed from this knoll. Some accounts read the 1315 charter as the first mention of the castle itself, which would make it older — the disagreement has never been settled.V roku 1315 daroval kráľ Karol Róbert miesto zvané Likava svojmu županovi Dončovi, ktorý spravoval Liptov aj Zvolen — župan bol kráľov hlavný úradník v stolici a patrili pod neho hrady, dane aj súdy. Dedina toho mena už stála; kamenný hrad pribudol neskôr a pramene kladú jeho stavbu do druhej polovice tridsiatych rokov 14. storočia, na skalu priamo nad cestou. Hrad teda dostal meno po dedine pod sebou, nie naopak — a to je dobrá pripomienka, že prvá písomná zmienka hovorí o zachovanej listine, nie o tom, odkedy tu ľudia žijú. Hrad tu stál kvôli doprave: drevo a dobytok putovali dolu Váhom, soľ a tovar hore, a z tohto kopca sa dalo všetko zastaviť, spočítať a zdaniť. Časť autorov číta listinu z roku 1315 ako prvú zmienku o samotnom hrade, čo by ho robilo starším — tento spor sa dodnes nerozhodol.
