Grijó
Camino Portugués · Camino Portugués de la Costa
Distrito do Porto · Distrito de OportoPortugal
Here Camino Portugués and Camino Portugués de la Costa converge. It is one of the points where the pilgrim shares the way with those arriving by another route.
From late Latin Ecclesiola —diminutive of ecclesia 'church'—, it evolved by aphesis and palatalisation to Igrijó and finally Grijó: 'the little church'. A common pattern in the rural toponymy of the Iberian northwest.
Evolution of the name
- Ecclesiola late Latin 6th — 9th century
- Igrejela / Igrijó Galician-Portuguese 10th — 12th century
- Grijó Portuguese from the 13th century
Reflections, to the letter
The name says 'little church': in 922 two clerics founded an Ecclesiola here, an igrejinha, and from that diminutive came Egrijinha, Egrijó and at last Grijó. What the walker faces is time's joke set in stone — an Augustinian monastery with a monumental front that still calls itself, syllable by syllable, 'the little church' it once was. The name stayed small while the building grew around it.
Glossary
- Aphaeresis
- Loss of one or more phonemes at the beginning of a word.
- Diminutive
- A derived form indicating smaller size or affection, formed with suffixes such as -illo, -ito, -uelo, -ete. Substantivised plural diminutives abound in toponymy: Hornillos, Boadilla, Calzadilla, Comillas, Pradillos.
- Palatalisation
- Softening of a sound as its articulation shifts toward the palate.
Sources
- Machado, J.P. — Dicionário Onomástico Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa
- Mattoso, J. — O monaquismo ibérico e Cluny (Lisboa: Estampa, 1968)
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Camino Portugués