Katharina von Bora was the daughter of a Jan von Bora auf Lippendorf and his wife Margarete, whose family name has not been established. Both were only specifically mentioned in the year 1505. It is certain that her father sent the five-year-old Katharina to the Benedictine cloister in Brehna in 1504 for education. This is documented in a letter from Laurentius Zoch to Martin Luther, written on October 30, 1531. This letter is the only evidence for Katharina von Bora's time spent within the monastery. At the age of nine she moved to the Cistercian monastery of Marienthron (Mary's Throne) in Nimbschen, near
Bora (wind) the North Wind. Historical linguists speculate that the name may derive from a Proto-Indo-European root *"gworh"- meaning "mountain" and giving rise to Germanic "burg" and "berg". A similar pattern is seen in the cognate name of the "buran" winds of central Asia and the name "purga" of their Siberian subtype. The changeable bora can often be felt all over Montenegrin Littoral, Dalmatia, Istria, Rijeka, the Slovenian Littoral, Trieste, and the rest of the Adriatic east coast. It blows in gusts. The bora is most common during the winter. It blows hardest, as the meteorologist Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel explained it