Manzanares el Real
Comunidad de Madrid
Compound toponym. Manzanares is a pre-Roman hydronym of disputed etymology: the hypothesis with most support —Coromines, Galmés de Fuentes— derives it from an Iberian base *mantia ('watercourse, river') plus locative suffix, without etymological relation to the fruit manzana (apple) despite the phonetic coincidence. El Real, added in the 14th century, refers to the Castilian royal domain of the place after the donation of the seigneury by King John I to the Marquis of Santillana in 1383.
Mantua, attested in Roman sources as a Carpetan civitas of the eponymous river valley, was the classical denomination of present-day Manzanares. The pre-Roman etymology of the root *mantia is common to several peninsular hydronyms (Manzanal, Mantua, Mañas) and is reconstructed as an Iberian base with the value of 'river, watercourse'. The apparent link with the fruit manzana is phonetic coincidence: Castilian manzana derives from the Latin mattiana (Roman variety of apple, see Ponte Maceira) by an independent evolutionary path. The medieval form Manzanares, with locative plural suffix -ares characteristic of Castilian Romance, designated the upper course of the river at the foot of the Guadarrama. The epithet El Real was added after the donation of John I to Pedro González de Mendoza in 1383, which converted the village into the head of the Real de Manzanares seigneury —a very vast noble domain that covered two hundred and forty square kilometres from the range to El Pardo—. The new castle of the Mendoza family, built between 1475 and 1485 by Juan Guas for the Duke of the Infantado, is one of the masterpieces of peninsular military Gothic.
Evolution of the name
- *mantia / Mantua pre-Roman Iberian before the 3rd century BC
- Manzanares medieval Castilian from the 12th century
- Manzanares el Real Castilian from 1383
Glossary
- Attested
- A form or word documented in writing in historical sources; opposed to "reconstructed" (forms proposed by comparative inference but not actually documented).
- 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.
- Hydronym
- A place name derived from the name of a river, lake or watercourse (Carrión, Eo, Sella, Deba, Cueza).
- Locative suffix
- A Castilian ending marking "place of" or "workshop where X is worked": -ería (panadería, herrería), -ero/-era (barquera, Itero "place of the road"). From the Latin -arium.
- Pre-Roman
- Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.
- Real de Manzanares
- Castilian noble seigneury founded by donation of King John I to Pedro González de Mendoza in 1383, with administrative head at Manzanares el Real and approximate extension of two hundred and forty square kilometres from the Guadarrama range to the El Pardo woodland. It comprised thirty-two hamlets, rights of pasture, hunting and exclusive forestal use. It remained under the Mendoza seigneury (later Dukes of the Infantado) until the abolition of seigneuries in 1837.
Sources
- Coromines, J. — Diccionario crítico etimológico
- Galmés de Fuentes, Á. — Toponimia: mito e historia
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Camino de Madrid