A Calle

Camino Inglés

A Coruña · La CoruñaGalicia

Substantivised Galician appellative: calle, from the Latin callis, 'narrow path, footpath, livestock passage'. In its original Latin sense and in conserved rural Galician, calle did not designate the urban street but the path itself —⁠the way worn by the constant passage of people and animals. The toponym preserves that primitive meaning: the place is called, literally, 'the path'.

Callis, in classical Latin, did not mean 'street' in the urban sense the word has today. Cicero, Virgil and Pliny use it to specifically designate a narrow path, opened by force of being trodden, especially in zones of livestock or transhumant shepherd passage —⁠the Latin equivalent of the Castilian cañada or the Italian cammino. The urban sense ('street of a city') is a medieval and modern development, later than the generalisation of walled urban centres. In Galician and Portuguese toponymy, where popular late Latin remained in rural use for centuries without urban contamination, calle and its feminine form a calle often kept the primitive sense: the path, the passage, the trodden way. The toponym A Calle on the Camino Inglés documents a point of pilgrim passage, a path sufficiently identified to give its name to the hamlet that grew alongside it. The editorial paradox is delightful: the place is called exactly 'the path' on a Path —⁠the name of the place is the very trade of the pilgrim. The same root callis gave the Castilian verb callejear, the adjective callejero and the noun callejón, all linked to the idea of path rather than street.

Evolution of the name

  1. callis Latin before the 5th century
  2. calle / cal medieval Galician from the 11th century
  3. A Calle modern Galician from the 15th century

Reflections, to the letter

The name of the hamlet is exactly what the pilgrim is doing. A Calle, in rural Galician, is not an urban street: it is a path, a track, a passage. From the Latin callis that Virgil used to name the shepherds' way. The toponym was probably born when a group of houses grew alongside a track sufficiently trodden to have its own name. That track, eight or nine centuries later, is still what it was: the Camino. The hamlet has no toponymic surname —⁠only the common noun turned into the name of the place. A form of editorial modesty.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Appellative
A common noun that designates a kind of object, place or person —⁠spring, mount, villa, church⁠— as opposed to the proper name that identifies a concrete individual. Many peninsular toponyms are substantivised appellatives: the place name is the common word describing the landscape, with nothing else added.
Semantic specialisation
A process by which a word narrows its meaning in a given language or register: Latin callis moves from 'rural path' in general to Spanish calle 'urban way between houses'. The opposite is semantic generalisation, when a word broadens its sense.

Sources

  • Corominas, J. & Pascual, J.A. — Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico
  • Navaza, G. — Toponimia de Galicia

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Camino Inglés

  1. Santiago de Compostela
  2. Sergude
  3. Leiro
  4. Sigüeiro
  5. Buscás
  6. A Calle
  7. Hospital de Bruma
  8. Presedo
  9. A Rúa de Francos
  10. Poulo
  11. Betanzos
  12. Vilanova
  13. ··· toward the start