Noia

Few names have a legend so good and so false. Tradition says Noia was founded by Noah (Noé) in person, whose ark is said to have run aground on nearby Monte Aro after the Flood, and that the name honours Noela, the patriarch's granddaughter; the town's coat of arms has long borne the ark and the dove with the olive branch. It is a learned and popular etymology at once, born of the pure sound-likeness between Noia and Noé. The reality is older and less biblical: Noia is a pre-Roman name, which Edelmiro Bascuas traces to a Paleo-European water-root, *noig-, *neig-, 'to wash' —⁠the 'washing place', very much at home at the head of a ría⁠—⁠. It has sometimes been confused with the Noega cited by Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela, but that was another city; what they share is the old mould of the name, not the history.