Ponte Maceira
A Coruña · La CoruñaGalicia
Transparent Romance compound. Ponte is Galician for 'bridge' (Latin pons, pontis); Maceira, 'apple tree', derives from the Latin mattiana ('apple of the mattiana variety', so named in the 1st century by the agronomist Caius Matius). The toponym describes the place with literalness: the medieval bridge of the Tambre surrounded by apple trees planted in the river meadows, Galician agrarian landscape documented in the cartulary of San Martín Pinario from the 12th century.
Mattiana is one of the best documented Roman agricultural variety names of Antiquity. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (XV, 14, 49), cites the mala Mattiana among the apple varieties cultivated in Italy, attributing the name to the agronomist Caius Matius, friend of Augustus and author of a culinary treatise now lost. The mattiana spread through the western provinces of the Empire and gave the generic name to the apple tree in late Hispanic Latin —mattianaria— and to the fruit. The evolution into the Romance languages passes through mazana in Castilian and maçana, maçá, maza in Galician-Portuguese; the tree, in turn, gives maceira in Galician and maceira in Portuguese. The suffix -eira, derived from the Latin -aria, forms nouns of 'place abundant in X' or 'tree that bears X'. The density of apple orchards in the Tambre vega justified the name from the late Middle Ages. The bridge of Ponte Maceira, built at the end of the 13th century over a previous Roman road, was an obligatory crossing on the western road to the Costa da Morte and preserved that function without interruption until the opening of the present C-543 road in 1932.
Evolution of the name
- pons / mattiana Latin 1st centuries BC–4th
- Ponte Maceira medieval Galician from the 12th century
Glossary
- Cutwater
- Architectural element of river bridges, consisting of a triangular or semicircular extension attached to the upstream face of the central piers. Its function is to divide the river current before it reaches the pier, reducing pressure and dragging debris to the sides. The cutwaters of Ponte Maceira are triangular in plan and of solid granite, characteristic of late Galician Romanesque of the 13th century.
- Roman road
- A stone-paved Roman highway, part of the imperial communications network (Via Aquitana, Via Augusta, Iter ab Asturica); many such roads became medieval routes and, later, stretches of the Camino de Santiago.
Sources
- Navaza, G. — Toponimia de Galicia
- Plinio — Naturalis Historia, XV, 14, 49
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