Beariz

Camino de la Geira y los Arrieiros · Camino Miñoto Ribeiro

Ourense · OrenseGalicia

Here Camino de la Geira y los Arrieiros and Camino Miñoto Ribeiro converge. It is one of the points where the pilgrim shares the way with those arriving by another route.

A possessor toponym: from the genitive of the Germanic personal name Viaricus, '(the estate) of Viaricus'. It is one of the many Galician names in -riz that fix the owner of an old holding.

The name keeps an owner with his surname changed into stone. Galician toponyms ending in -riz —⁠Beariz, Guitiriz, Mondariz⁠— fix the genitive of a Germanic personal name, the name of the possessor of an early-medieval villa: 'so-and-so's estate'. In this case the so-and-so was a Viaricus, a Suevic or Gothic name, and from its genitive Viarici came Beariz. It is the onomastic trace of the Germanic peoples who divided up the Galician land after Rome: they did not leave their language, but they left their names stuck to the soil. The district —⁠the Terras de Montes⁠— appears named already in 1115, when Doña Urraca ceded it to Archbishop Gelmírez; the reconstruction of the personal name is probable rather than documented in detail, but the pattern is firm.

Evolution of the name

  1. (villa) Viarici Germanic / Latin early medieval
  2. Beariz Galician modern

Reflections, to the letter

Beariz hides a man. Galician names in -riz —⁠like Guitiriz or Mondariz⁠— keep the genitive of a Germanic owner, the master of an old estate: here, a Suevic or Gothic Viaricus, 'the villa of Viaricus'. The peoples who arrived after Rome did not leave us their language, but they did leave their names, driven into the land. You are in the Terras de Montes, in the heart of the Testeiro, already on the way down to Santiago; the name you tread is that of someone who lived here fifteen hundred years ago.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

probable

Sources

  • Piel, J.M. & Kremer, D. — Hispano-gotisches Namenbuch (Heidelberg: Winter, 1976)
  • Nomenclátor de Galicia (Xunta de Galicia)

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Camino de la Geira y los Arrieiros

  1. Santiago de Compostela
  2. Codeseda
  3. Beariz
  4. Pazos de Arenteiro
  5. Ribadavia
  6. Cortegada
  7. Lobios
  8. Baños de Riocaldo
  9. Portela do Homem
  10. ··· toward the start