Cervo

The name looks like a deer, and perhaps it is one. The simple reading derives it from the Latin cervus, 'deer', an animal toponym like so many, and so Nicandro Ares understands it. But there is another path: for the family of Cerv- names —⁠Cervantes, Cervaña, Cérvora⁠— Juan José Moralejo proposes a pre-Roman, Indo-European base, *(s)kerbh-, 'sharp, cutting', which would make Cervo a name of the terrain, 'the pointed, the rocky', not of the beast. For a plain Cervo, without pre-Roman suffixes, the deer is the more economical explanation; the pre-Roman one remains a live alternative. In the municipality is San Ciprián, the Sargadelos peninsula, cradle of Galician chinaware; and the deer, curiously, slips into the local heraldry, as if the name had ended up believing itself.