Olmedo

ValladolidCastilla y León

From the Latin ulmetum, “elm grove”: a collective of ulmus “elm” with the suffix -etum of abundance, the one behind Spanish -edo (robledo “oak grove”, pinedo “pine grove”). Olmedo names the old elm wood of the Tierra de Pinares.

From a forest of reddish trees this name is born, and it is also borne by people of good timber: theirs shines in more colours than the single hue that gave the elm its name. For the elm is named by its colour: ulmus comes from the Indo-European root *el- “red, brown”, the same that named the elk and the alder for their reddish hue. And Olmedo is its Latin collective, ulmetum “elm grove”, from ulmus with the suffix -etum —⁠the one behind robledo, pinedo, alameda⁠—⁠. It is a word of the Indo-European west —⁠Latin ulmus, English elm⁠—⁠, alive only where the elm grew. Today that wood is all but gone: in the 20th century Dutch elm disease —⁠the blight that killed nearly every elm in Europe⁠— emptied these fields. Olmedo keeps in its name the trees it no longer has.

Evolution of the name

*el- Indo-European raíz prehistórica
ulmus → ulmetum Latin Roman era
Olmedo Castilian from the 11th century

Reflections, to the letter

Olmedo is not an official stop —⁠the route only brushes past it, between Alcazarén and Puente Duero⁠— but the name asks for the detour. It means “elm grove”, and Dutch elm disease wiped out those elms in the 20th century. In the Plaza de San Andrés the bare trunk of La Olma still stands, the old elm that withstood the plague until the disease reached it in 2013; beside it the town plants disease-resistant elms. Stop before that trunk: it is the last great witness of the wood that named the town, and the proof that Olmedo is trying, tree by tree, to deserve its name again.

Glossary

Suffix -edo (Latin -etum): An ending that forms plant collectives: the place stocked with a tree species. From Latin -etum, it yields Spanish -edo (robledo, pinedo, olmedo) and, in the feminine, -eda (alameda, olmeda).
Dutch elm disease: A disease of elms caused by Ophiostoma fungi spread by bark beetles; it blocks the tree's vascular system until it dies. In two waves through the 20th century it razed most of the elms of Europe and North America. In Spanish, grafiosis.

Sources

Toponomasticon Hispaniae — Olmedo
Pokorny, J. — Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (raíz *el-)

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 de Madrid

Evolution of the name

Reflections, to the letter

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

Glossary

Sources