Deba
Deva
Gipuzkoa · GuipúzcoaEuskadi · País Vasco
Pre-Roman hydronym of the river Deba, of Indo-European root dewa 'goddess, divinity' or 'divine river'. European family: Dee (Scotland), Dvina (Russia), Devon (England). The town takes its name from the river at its mouth.
Evolution of the name
- Deva (hidrónimo) pre-Roman Indo-European before the 1st century BC
- Deba Basque / Castilian from the 13th century
Reflections, to the letter
A few kilometres from the village lies the Ekain cave, with rock paintings of horses 14,000 years old — World Heritage Site, comparable in quality to Altamira and less well known. The paintings are five thousand years older than the word Deba written by the Romans, but painted in the same river basin that even then was called goddess.
Glossary
- Carta puebla
- A medieval legal document by which a lord or king founded a new settlement, granting privileges and exemptions in exchange for occupying and defending the territory.
- Hydronym
- A place name derived from the name of a river, lake or watercourse.
- Hydronymic
- Pertaining to hydronyms (place names from watercourses).
- Indo-European
- A linguistic family encompassing Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and most European languages. Basque is NOT Indo-European —it is a language isolate—.
- Palaeo-European hydronymy
- A layer of European hydronyms of ancient Indo-European root, identified by Hans Krahe in the 1950s. The root dewa- (Deba, Dee, Dvina, Devon) is one of its three main formants.
- Pre-Roman
- Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.
Sources
- Mitxelena, K. — Apellidos vascos
- Krahe, H. — Unsere ältesten Flussnamen (1964)
- Altuna, J. — La cueva de Ekain y sus pinturas (San Sebastián, 1986)
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Camino del Norte