Beirut & Bayreuth-redux

So I got a single comment on my post yesterday. The writer noted that the two cities' names were pronounced differently. That's a good point in that the 'apparent' similarity may partly be the vagaries of English spelling conventions applied to foreign words. But I then took a step which would have been sensible before writing. I looked up the source for Beirut, Lebanon. The site http://www.statoids.com/ulb.html provides the following: "From Hebrew be'erot: the wells". Seems reasonable but clearly would have no relation to the German name which is discussed on this site http://www.ngw.nl/int/dld/b/bayreuth.htm . The assertion here is that the heraldic images for the city from the 15th Century show crossed "reut" a farmer's sticklike tool, and that, thereby, the name comes from these symbols.

Hafta admit I find this kind of thing fascinating. Used to get caught up in reading page after page of the dictionary when I was younger.