Ordizia
Gipuzkoa · GuipúzcoaPaís Vasco / Euskadi · País Vasco
Compound Basque toponym. Ordi, Basque word for 'drunk, intoxicated' but in toponymic context 'clayey land, fertile terrain', plus locative suffix -zia. It designates the town settled in an especially fertile meadow of Goierri.
Evolution of the name
- ordi + zia medieval Basque before the 13th century
- Ordizia Basque from 1268
Reflections, to the letter
The name points to the fertile valley floor of the Goierri, and every Wednesday that fertility becomes visible: since 1512, under Queen Juana's tax-free market charter, the baserritarras bring down to the square the vegetables, fruit and cheeses of the Oria valley. The market is simply the harvest of the very soil the town is named for, laid out in plain sight.
Glossary
- Idiazabal Cheese PDO
- Traditional Basque-Navarrese cheese elaborated with raw milk of latxa or carranzana sheep through lactic curdling procedure and curing in natural caves. The Protected Designation of Origin, recognised in 1996, limits production to 530 municipalities of the Basque Country and Navarre. The typical piece weighs between 1 and 3 kg, with maturation of 60 to 360 days.
- 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.
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Camino Vasco del Interior