A Coruña

La Coruña

Camino Inglés

A Coruña · La CoruñaGalicia

Toponym of disputed origin between two strong hypotheses. The Latin one derives from late Latin Caronium or Crunia, possibly linked to an opaque pre-Roman base Latinised. The popular legend —⁠already in the 13th century⁠— connected it with the columna that supported the Tower of Hercules, the 2nd-century Roman lighthouse that still presides over the city. The Galician form A Coruña is attested from the 12th century.

The Roman city documented at the site was called Brigantium, a Latinised Celtic fortress — base briga (Celtic, 'fortified city on a height') with a Latin suffix. Pliny the Elder mentions it as one of the main ports of Gallaecia. The Roman name was lost during the Early Middle Ages, replaced by a vernacular form Caronium / Crunia of unclear etymology. The medieval learned tradition —⁠recorded in Alfonso X's Crónica General and other 13th-century sources⁠— related the toponym to columna, alluding to the Tower of Hercules: the Roman lighthouse built in the 2nd century AD by order of the emperor Trajan, the only lighthouse of classical antiquity still in use twenty centuries later. The columna → Coruña connection is phonetically forced and modern onomastics discards it, but it reveals the symbolic weight that the lighthouse held in the medieval imagination of the town. The form A Coruña (with the Galician feminine article) has been official since 1995; La Coruña is the Castilianised form, in use from the 16th century.

Evolution of the name

  1. Brigantium Latin (referencia romana) 1st — 5th centuries
  2. Caronium / Crunia late Latin 6th — 11th centuries
  3. A Coruña / La Coruña Galician / Castilian from the 12th century

Reflections, to the letter

The second great starting point of the Camino Inglés, especially popular in the 15th century when the ports of southern England chartered direct ships to make the pilgrimage in a few weeks. Seventy-five kilometres to Santiago, against one hundred and twenty from Ferrol — a shorter option for the pilgrim with fewer days. The Tower of Hercules, a 2nd-century Roman lighthouse that still works, was the last point the ships saw as they sailed away on their return day and the first one on arrival. Its cylindrical silhouette is linked to the very popular etymology of the toponym, though phonetics do not back it.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

disputed

Glossary

Attested
A form or word documented in writing in historical sources; opposed to "reconstructed" (forms proposed by comparative inference but not actually documented).
Briga
Celtic word meaning 'fortified city on a height', productive in the toponymy of the peninsular northwest and across Celtic Europe: Brigantium (A Coruña), Coímbra (Conímbriga), Segobriga (Cuenca), Lacobriga (Carrión), Brigach (Germany).
Etymology
The origin and history of a word and the phonetic and semantic changes it has undergone. An etymology may be confirmed, probable or disputed depending on documentary attestations and linguistic parallels.
Folk etymology
A reinterpretation of an opaque toponym or word by analogy with another of similar sound and known meaning, without real etymological grounds. Folk etymology often takes hold in the collective imagination even when linguists dismiss it.
Onomastics
The linguistic discipline that studies proper names — of persons, places and institutions. "Onomastic readings" are competing etymological hypotheses about a name.

Sources

  • Navaza, G. — Toponimia de Galicia
  • Plinio el Viejo — Naturalis Historia, libro IV

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Camino Inglés

  1. ··· toward Santiago
  2. Sigrás
  3. Pontedeume
  4. Vilarmaior
  5. Cambre
  6. Cabanas
  7. O Burgo
  8. A Coruña
  9. Fene
  10. Neda
  11. Xubia
  12. Ferrol