Cabruñana
AsturiasAsturias
Toponym derived from the Latin caprina ('place of goats'), substantivated adjectival of capra, with the Asturleonese locative suffix -ana. It designates the pastoral height situated on the divide of the Narcea and the Nalón, traditionally dedicated to seasonal goat and sheep grazing.
Evolution of the name
- caprina Latin 1st–5th centuries
- Cabruñana medieval Asturleonese from the 10th century
Reflections, to the letter
The name comes from caprina, the goats' high ground, and that is exactly what the walker treads: a grassy saddle on the watershed between the Narcea and the Nalon. The old Camin Real de la Mesa came down through here, the drove road along which the vaqueiros de alzada drove their herds up to the summer pastures and back to the valleys in winter. Anyone crossing the Cabruñana archaeological route still walks the pasture that named the place.
Glossary
- Braña
- High pastureland of the northern peninsula —Asturias, Cantabria, León, Aragonese Pyrenees—, seasonally occupied by bovine and goat livestock between May and October. Transhumance between the valley (winter) and the braña (summer) has structured Cantabrian pastoral economy for millennia. The pasiega, vaqueira and mountain huts are the characteristic shelters of the braña way of life.
- 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.
- Palatalisation
- A phonetic shift in which a sound is articulated against the palate. In Castilian: Latin nn → ñ (annus → año); preserved initial pl- (planus → plano) versus Asturleonese palatalisation to ll- (Llanes).
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Camino Primitivo