Jopengasse

Until the 16th century, this lane was usually counted as part of the Brotbänkengasse (Bread Bench Lane), though the name Jopengasse appears in isolated instances as early as 1449. The present-day numbers 28–39 and 41–45 were reckoned from 1574, together with the adjoining properties of the Brotbänkengasse, as part of the Schnüffelmarkt.

The older derivation of the name Jopengasse from the city of Joppa (the biblical Jaffa), supposedly because the Teutonic Order liked to name the surroundings of churches after biblical places, has been disproven by the simple fact that the street name did not come into use until the mid-15th century.

The lane belongs to the guild streets and takes its name from the Jopen or Schopen brewers who lived there. Their brew — formerly called Jopenbier or Schopenbier, and still produced in Danzig — enjoyed great popularity and was widely shipped as a sailors' beer. It was a sweat-inducing, warming double beer with up to 55% extract content.

The designation of the guild as Schopenbrauer, which occurs in other places as well, is undoubtedly derived primarily from schope or schuffe, a large wooden ladle used to pour hot water over the malt. The oldest municipal ordinance from the period 1455–1466 already links the two terms in the regulation: "Bath-keepers and their journeymen and Schuffen-brewers shall run to the fire with buckets and schuffen [ladles]."

However, the word schope (ladle) and the expression jope are by no means fully synonymous. The latter appears in no other place and even in Danzig was used only for the beer and the guild, never as the name of the utensil itself. That the drink was called both Jopenbier and Schopenbier may be explained by a second meaning of schope: the German Jope is a loanword that entered the language from the Romance languages in the 12th century, denoting a close-fitting garment worn by both men and women. The variant forms Schôpe, Schoppe, or Schûbe, derived from the same Romance root, carry the same meaning. The similarity in effect — the beer warmed a person just as well as a jope (jacket) — led to the humorous practice of naming the beer after the warming garment.

That this explanation is indeed correct is attested by the humanist and physician Dr. Christophorus Heyl, who lived in Danzig from 1547 to 1551. In the introduction to his Latin translation of a treatise by Galen, he praises the quality of Danzig beer and writes: Ea (cerevisia) locis quibusdam, nam longissime avehitur, Prussiaca, quibusdam Thoracina cerevisia vocatur. — "Thorax" is used here in the general sense of "chest garment" as a Latin rendering of the German Jope.

In the designation of the guild as Schopenbrauer, two etymological roots thus merged in Danzig: Schope meaning "ladle" and Schope meaning "Jope" (jacket). In Holland, the word Jope is still used for such beer vessels to this day.