A Pena

Camino de Finisterre y Muxía

A Coruña · La CoruñaGalicia

Descriptive toponym, from the Latin pinna ('feather' in original meaning, 'crag, battlement, pointed rock' through metaphorical evolution), with the Galician feminine article a prefixed. The Galician form pena preserves the meaning common to all peninsular Romance languages: high rock, rocky outcrop, rocky crest. The name describes the granite outcrop that dominates the hamlet's surroundings.

Pinna, in classical Latin, designated the feather of the bird and by extension the pointed elements of the architectural landscape —⁠the battlements of walls, the points of arrows⁠—⁠. Late Hispanic Latin extended the meaning to the natural landscape, applying pinna to crags, ridges and rocky crestings, in what linguists describe as a botanical > geographical metaphor. The form pena is common to Galician, Portuguese and Leonese; Castilian gives peña; Catalan, penya. Galician toponymy multiplies the term with Galician article in front or behind (A Pena, O Penedo, Pena Furada), always as a descriptive appellative of rocky outcrops. In this case, A Pena names the granite that outcrops next to the road between Vilaserío and Olveiroa, the last halt before descending to the basin of the river Xallas.

Evolution of the name

  1. pinna Latin 1st centuries BC–4th
  2. Pena medieval Galician from the 9th century

Reflections, to the letter

A Pena is a pastoral halt at five hundred metres of altitude, dominated by five houses and a public hostel. The rural chapel of San Cristovo, a modest 18th-century granite construction, preserves a 16th-century cross at the entrance. From the rocky outcrop that gives the place its name —⁠one hundred metres north of the hamlet⁠— opens the best panoramic view of the whole stage: to the west, the straight line of the Atlantic horizon still thirty kilometres away; to the north, the wind turbines of the A Capelada park; to the south, the Xallas basin with its small scattered hamlets. It is a recurrent meridian rest point.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Cruceiro (Galician)
Galician devotional monument consisting of a carved stone column that supports a cross, generally with Christ crucified on one face and the Sorrowful Virgin on the opposite one. They were erected from the 15th century at crossroads, paths, hamlet entrances and rural church doorways, with an apotropaic function (protection against evil) and a memorial function (remembrance of the deceased). Galicia preserves more than twelve thousand catalogued cruceiros.
Descriptive toponym
A place name describing a function or feature of the site (as opposed to anthroponyms, which commemorate a person). Viana = "place of the road"; Fromista = "of wheat"; Hornillos = "of the ovens".

Sources

  • Navaza, G. — Toponimia de Galicia

If you have a correction or an observation about this information,
please write to us through the form at the foot of the site.
We will grow more precise thanks to your contribution.

Camino de Finisterre y Muxía

  1. ··· toward Santiago
  2. Corcubión
  3. Cee
  4. Dumbría
  5. Hospital
  6. Olveiroa
  7. Logoso
  8. A Pena
  9. Vilaserío
  10. Trasmonte
  11. Negreira
  12. Ponte Maceira
  13. Augapesada
  14. Santiago de Compostela