Hospital de Bruma

O Mesón do Vento · A Bruma

Camino Inglés

A Coruña · La CoruñaGalicia

Compound toponym. Hospital, from the Latin hospitale ('place of lodging'), specifically designates a medieval Jacobean hospice: a building founded to shelter pilgrims, with bed, food and basic care. Bruma, the second element, is pre-Roman and of opaque meaning — probably a Celtic base linked to a topographic or hydronymic feature, prior to the hospice that gives the place its current name.

The first element documents one of the most central trades of the medieval Jacobean network. A hospital, in medieval Castilian and Galician, was not primarily a centre for medical care: it was a charitable shelter, founded by a religious order, a noble or a council, to freely welcome poor pilgrims on their way to Santiago. The Chronicle of the Codex Calixtinus (12th century) lists them by name along the routes. The Bruma one is documented from the 12th century as a subsidiary of the monastery of Sobrado dos Monxes, distinguished by being the point where the two branches of the Camino Inglés —⁠the Ferrol and the A Coruña⁠— converged before continuing to Santiago. Because of the importance of the junction, the hospice grew into a parish and gave its name to the settlement. The second element, Bruma, is older. Galician onomastics classifies it as pre-Roman, probably Celtic, of lost meaning. Some onomatologists connect it with hydronymic or topographic bases attested in other names of the peninsular northwest, but medieval documentation shows no earlier forms. It is one of those toponyms where the Roman layer covered, without erasing, a pre-Roman layer that remains as the substrate.

Evolution of the name

  1. Bruma (sustrato prerromano) Celtic before the 1st century BC
  2. Hospitale de Bruma medieval Latin 12th — 14th centuries
  3. Hospital de Bruma modern Galician from the 15th century

Reflections, to the letter

The name of the place holds in a single word the medieval Jacobean trade: a hospital was not a hospital in the modern sense, but a charitable shelter where poor pilgrims slept and ate for free. The Bruma one was founded in the 12th century and was a subsidiary of the Cistercian monastery of Sobrado. It marks, moreover, the junction where pilgrims arriving from Ferrol meet those arriving from A Coruña — one of the few points in the whole Jacobean network where two branches formally converge. The toponym Bruma, older than Rome, remains opaque: nobody knows any longer what it meant when it was given. The medieval hospice rescued it as the name of the place.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Attested
A form or word documented in writing in historical sources; opposed to "reconstructed" (forms proposed by comparative inference but not actually documented).
Confluence (Jacobean)
A point on a Camino where two different routes merge into one. There are few formal confluences in the Jacobean network — the Hospital de Bruma joins Ferrol and A Coruña; Melide joins Francés, Norte and Primitivo; Granja de Moreruela splits the Vía de la Plata into the Sanabrés and Astorga branches.
Hospice / Medieval hospital
A building founded by a religious order, a noble or a medieval council to freely shelter poor pilgrims, the sick or travellers. The network of Jacobean hospices documented in the Codex Calixtinus and other medieval sources was dense: in some stretches of the Camino Francés there was one every twenty kilometres.
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.
Onomatologist
A specialist in onomastics, the linguistic discipline that studies proper names — of persons (anthroponyms), places (toponyms) and institutions.
Pre-Roman
Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.

Sources

  • Navaza, G. — Toponimia de Galicia
  • Códice Calixtino — Libro V (Guía del Peregrino)

If you have a correction or an observation about this information,
please write to us through the form at the foot of the site.
We will grow more precise thanks to your contribution.

Camino Inglés

  1. Santiago de Compostela
  2. Sergude
  3. Leiro
  4. Sigüeiro
  5. Buscás
  6. A Calle
  7. Hospital de Bruma
  8. Presedo
  9. A Rúa de Francos
  10. Poulo
  11. Betanzos
  12. Vilanova
  13. Carral
  14. ··· toward the start