Ourense

Orense

Vía de la Plata · Camino de San Rosendo y la Reina Santa

Ourense · OrenseGalicia

Here Vía de la Plata and Camino de San Rosendo y la Reina Santa converge. It is one of the points where the pilgrim shares the way with those arriving by another route.

From the Latin Aurientia or Auriense, derived from the Latin aurum ('gold'), after the gold-bearing outcrops of the river Miño that the Romans exploited from the 1st century. The Galician form Ourense preserves the diphthong au- > ou-; the Castilian Orense simplified it.

The Latin noun aurum 'gold' (also the root of aurífero, áureo, aureolar, French or, Italian oro, the chemical symbol Au on the periodic table) named the Roman fluvial gold exploitations in the Miño valley. Pliny the Elder documents the gold-mining activity of the area in the 1st century (Naturalis Historia, XXXIII, 21), and the archaeological remains of the Burgas —⁠Roman thermal complex⁠— and the mining canals still visible in the surroundings confirm the place's economic importance for the imperial administration. The Latin locative suffix -iense (variant of -ensis, 'belonging to, originating from') applied to aurum gave Auriense, '(the place) of gold'. The Galician diphthongisation au- > ou- is regular (parallel to auriculum → ouro/oro, aurum → ouro); Castilian simplified it to o- in Orense. The current official form is the Galician Ourense. The city also preserves the Burgas in operation: three thermal springs in the urban centre, surfacing water at 67 °C — the same that supplied Augustus' soldiers.

Evolution of the name

  1. Aurium / Auriense Latin 1st — 5th century
  2. Ourense / Orense Galician-Portuguese / medieval Castilian from the 10th century

Reflections, to the letter

The name comes from aurum, the gold the Romans wrenched from the Miño. On the city’s edge, at the Oira hillfort beside the river, the remains of a Roman gold mine survive: there they washed the sediment the water carried down, separating nuggets by density. To look at the Miño from that spot is to understand why they called the city Auria, the golden one — the river that named it kept running, heavy with golden sands, at the feet of those who christened it.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

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.

Sources

  • Plinio el Viejo — Naturalis Historia, XXXIII, 21
  • Sánchez Palencia, F.J. — La minería del oro romano en el noroeste peninsular (Madrid: CSIC, 2000)
  • Cabeza Quiles, F. — Os nomes da terra

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.

Vía de la Plata

  1. Santiago de Compostela
  2. Ponte Ulla
  3. Bandeira
  4. Lalín
  5. Castro Dozón
  6. Cea
  7. Ourense
  8. Allariz
  9. Xunqueira de Ambía
  10. Laza
  11. Verín
  12. A Gudiña
  13. Lubián
  14. ··· toward the start