A Pobra do Caramiñal

The name joins a foundation and a plant. Pobra is the 'puebla', the newly founded settlement —⁠from the verb pobrar, from the Latin populare⁠—⁠, here on the initiative of the archbishopric of Santiago. Caramiñal is a plant-name: 'place where the caramiña abounds', the shrub Corema album —⁠also called camariña⁠— that grows on the Atlantic dunes and that the friar Martín Sarmiento already pointed to in the 18th century as the origin of the name; the town's coat of arms bears it with its little berry. The ultimate root of carama is unresolved —⁠hesitating between a Latin and a pre-Roman base⁠— but the plant is in plain sight, and with it the meaning. The present town was born of the union, around 1822, of two centres: Vila do Caramiñal and Pobra do Deán.