The name 'Wire of Death' is an English rendition of one of its popular Dutch names; Dodendraad which can be translated as either "Death wire" or "Wire of the dead". As the war continued and more and more victims fell to the electric fence it became known as simply De Draad meaning "The Wire". To the German authorities it was officially known as the Grenzhochspannungshindernis ("High Voltage Frontier Barrier").