O Porriño
Porriño
PontevedraGalicia
Galician diminutive of porro 'leek' (from the Latin porrum): 'the little leek-field', for the traditional crops of the Louro river meadows. Some onomasts reject the vegetal hypothesis and posit a medieval personal name Porrius; the popular association with the crop, however, is the most deeply rooted.
The toponym poses the usual tension between popular etymology —always seductive— and documentary etymology. The form porriño in old and modern Galician unambiguously denotes a small leek or a leek-field (diminutive in -iño applied to the noun porro, from the Latin porrum). The valley of the river Louro, where the town sits, was historically a meadow of horticultural crops; 16th-century parish registers attest the production of onions, garlic and leeks in quantity. The competing hypothesis —that the name derives from a medieval personal name Porrius— rests on analogies with other -iño toponyms (Casariño, Pereiriño) that do derive from personal names; but no Porrius is attested in the epigraphy or the cartularies of the Iberian northwest. The leek affiliation, however suspiciously literal, remains the more solid reading. The Galician article O —'The' (masculine singular)— is a feature proper to the toponym: the place is not Porriño but O Porriño, just like O Grove, O Carballiño or A Coruña.
Evolution of the name
- porrum Latin (sustantivo común) 1st century BC — 5th
- Porrinno / Porriño medieval Galician-Portuguese 12th — 15th century
- O Porriño modern Galician from the 16th century
Glossary
- Anthroponym
- A personal name, often used as the base of toponyms (Lucronius → Logroño, Sigerici → Castrojeriz).
- Attested
- A form or word documented in writing in historical sources; opposed to "reconstructed" (forms proposed by comparative inference but not actually documented).
- 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.
- 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.
- Folk etymology
- Spontaneous reinterpretation of a toponym by speakers who no longer recognise its real origin, assigning it a transparent meaning in the current language. Santillana = "holy + flat" is folk etymology; the real origin is Sanctae Iulianae.
- Onomatologist
- A specialist in onomastics, the linguistic discipline that studies proper names — of persons (anthroponyms), places (toponyms) and institutions.
Sources
- Filgueira Valverde, X. — Toponimia gallega
- Sarmiento, M. — Catálogo de voces y frases de la lengua gallega (siglo XVIII)
- Cabeza Quiles, F. — Os nomes da terra (Vigo: Galaxia, 2008)
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