Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Etimologia numelui Bacăului" in Romanian language version.
A county and a town which, according to legend, was named after Bakó. He was a Hungarian outlaw from Calugara who was caught and condemned to death. At that time the condemned could escape death by agreeing to become executioners themselves. The Hungarian word for executioner or hangman is bakó. When he returned to Calugara, Bako opened a bar on a junction of trade routes on the River Bistrița and from this the ‘Town of Bako’ evolved. A less fanciful explanation may be that the name is simply derived from the Romanian bac ‘ferry’.
