Fuente de Cantos
BadajozExtremadura
Descriptive compound toponym. Fuente, from the Latin fons, fontis ('spring'), a habitual hydronymic appellative. De Cantos, substantivised plural of Latin cantus ('stone, rounded pebble', a word of pre-Roman origin incorporated into Hispanic Latin), describes the stony bed of the spring or the surrounding land covered with pebbles.
Cantus is one of the Hispanic Latin terms whose etymology is still debated between the pre-Roman reading —a Celtic or Paleo-European word of the kanto- family ('stone, rocky corner'), with parallels in other western Indo-European languages— and the patrimonial Latin. Contemporary peninsular onomastics favours the pre-Roman origin: canto, preserved in Castilian as 'loose stone, corner, rocky edge', produces descriptive toponyms across the Peninsula (Cantos, Cantera, Cantalapiedra, Cantalejo, Cantábrico). The Badajoz town of Fuente de Cantos takes its name from a spring whose stone bed and stony surroundings are visible from old. Head of the eponymous judicial district, it is one of the most patrimony-loaded white villages of southern Extremadura: Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) was born here, the Baroque painter of religious chiaroscuro and fruit still lifes; the birth house is today a museum. The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Granada, 15th-century Mudejar reformed in the 17th, preserves several Zurbaranesque paintings. The pilgrim arrives here after Monesterio on one of the longest and most monotonous stages of the Plata.
Evolution of the name
- fons + cantus Latin before the 8th century
- Fuente de Cantos medieval Castilian from the 13th century
Glossary
- Etymology
- The origin and history of a word and the phonetic and semantic changes it has undergone. An etymology may be confirmed, probable or disputed depending on documentary attestations and linguistic parallels.
- Hydronymic
- Pertaining to hydronyms (place names from watercourses).
- Onomastics
- The linguistic discipline that studies proper names — of persons, places and institutions. "Onomastic readings" are competing etymological hypotheses about a name.
- Pre-Roman
- Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.
- Substantivised plural
- A device by which an adjective or noun in the plural is fixed as a place name without the noun that governed it: fontanas = "[lands of the] springs", ferreiros = "[place of the] smiths". Frequent in medieval repopulation.
Sources
- Diputación de Badajoz — Inventario de patrimonio
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Vía de la Plata