Atarés
HuescaAragón
Toponym of probable Vasco-pre-Roman origin. The hypothesis with most support derives it from the Aquitanian base atar- (from ate, 'gate, passage') with the locative suffix -és, designating 'place of the passage' or 'valley gate', a description that fits the geographical position of the hamlet between the Aragón valley and the Jaca depression.
Evolution of the name
- *atar- pre-Roman Aquitanian before the 9th century
- Atarés medieval Aragonese from the 11th century
Reflections, to the letter
The name keeps the Basque-Aquitanian ate, 'gate, pass'. That gate is still here: at the village edge, the Torre del Boalar stands on its rocky spur watching the gorge that links the valley of Atares with the plain of Jaca, the old pass on the Jaca-to-Pamplona road. Climb up to it and you grasp at once why the place is called the gate of the valley.
Glossary
- Atari (Basque)
- Basque word of pre-Roman origin that designates the gate, the passage, the threshold. Cognate with Aquitanian atar- and productive in Pyrenean toponymy with derivatives like Atarés (Huesca), Ataun (Gipuzkoa), Atárrabia (Navarra) and Aterbe (Gipuzkoa). It originally designates passage points of valleys or mountain ridges.
- Locative suffix
- A Castilian ending marking "place of" or "workshop where X is worked": -ería (panadería, herrería), -ero/-era (barquera, Itero "place of the road"). From the Latin -arium.
- Pre-Roman
- Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.
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Camino Aragonés