Hontanas
BurgosCastilla y León
From the Latin fontanas 'springs, fountains', a substantivised plural: 'the [lands of the] springs'. The hamlet sits in a hollow that collects several springs — scarce water on the Castilian meseta named the place.
Evolution of the name
- fontanas late Latin 6th — 9th century
- Fontanas / Hontanas medieval Castilian 11th — 15th century
- Hontanas Castilian from the 16th century
Reflections, to the letter
Beside the church apse a cut-stone fountain runs, twin spouts and fresh water all year; in the street a vaulted passage was built to channel the spring flowing beneath it. After five kilometres of dry meseta from Hornillos, that thread of water is the first thing to greet the pilgrim. And it is, quite literally, the name of the village: Hontanas means the springs.
Glossary
- 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'. Frequent in the medieval Castilian repopulation.
- Vulgar Latin
- The spoken variety of Latin in the late Empire and Early Middle Ages, distinct from classical literary Latin; the direct basis of the Romance languages.
- Palatalisation
- A phonetic shift in which a sound is articulated against the palate. In Castilian, the initial Latin f- passed through aspiration to the present-day silent h- (fontana → hontana) between the 14th and 16th centuries.
Sources
- Ayuntamiento de Hontanas · sección de historia (hontanas.es)
- Menéndez Pidal, R. — Orígenes del español
- Estepa Díez, C. — El nacimiento de León y Castilla
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