Cadavedo
Principado de Asturias
Toponym derived from the Galician-Portuguese-Asturian word cádavo ('burnt tree trunk standing after a forest fire'), from the pre-Roman base cad- linked to the idea of burning or blackening, with the Asturian collective suffix -edo (Latin -etum). It means 'place of cádavos, burnt place' —it commemorates an ancient forest fire.
Cádavo is the same pre-Roman word we already saw in O Cádavo (Camino Primitivo, province of Lugo). In rural Galician, Asturian and Portuguese it specifically designates the burnt trunk standing that survives a forest fire —rooted, blackened, without a canopy. The word belongs to the Hispanic pre-Roman substrate, with the base cad- linked to 'to burn, to blacken' through Celtoid parallels and possible earlier Indo-European matrix. The Asturian suffix -edo, the evolution of Latin collective -etum, indicates the set: a cadavedo is a place covered with cádavos, scene of an ancient fire from which the calcined trunks remain standing. The hamlet, in the council of Valdés, is a Gronze stage head between Soto de Luiña and Luarca. It preserves a characteristic rural architecture with hórreos and paneras from the 18th century, and a chapel dedicated to the Virgen de la Regalina —local patron with a country festival on the last Sunday of August, one of the most rooted celebrations of western Asturias.
Evolution of the name
- cad- + -etum pre-Roman + Latin before the 10th century
- Cadavedo medieval Asturleonese from the 12th century
Glossary
- Collective suffix
- An ending that adds to a noun the sense of "a place where the named thing abounds". In Castilian-Leonese, -al is the most productive (Pinar, Robledal, Rabanal); in Galician -edo (Carballedo); in Basque -tz (Zarautz).
- Hórreo
- A traditional raised granary, set on stone pillars to protect it from rodents and damp. Galician ones are rectangular and of granite with gabled roofs; Asturian ones are square and of wood.
- Pre-Roman
- Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.
Sources
- García Arias, X.Ll. — Toponimia asturiana
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 del Norte