Porto

Oporto

Camino Portugués · Camino Portugués de la Costa

Distrito do Porto · Distrito de OportoPortugal

Here Camino Portugués and Camino Portugués de la Costa converge. It is one of the points where the pilgrim shares the way with those arriving by another route.

From the Latin Portus Cale —⁠'the port of Cale'⁠—⁠, a doublet between the pre-Roman settlement of Cale on the south bank of the Douro and the Roman port built on the north bank. The medieval contraction of the compound gave its name both to the city and to the kingdom of Portugal.

The pre-Roman toponym Cale designated the hillfort settlement on the south bank of the Douro —⁠today Vila Nova de Gaia⁠—⁠. Its root is contested: some onomasts link it to the Celtic kal- 'hard, stony', others to an older pre-Indo-European substrate. After the Roman occupation, a river port was built on the north bank, called Portus Cale: two facing settlements preserved under a single dual name. The contraction of the compound to Portucale appears in Suebic documents from the 6th century. When the County of Portucale became an independent kingdom in the 12th century, it kept the full form Portugal; the city, by contrast, retained only the first part of the compound: Porto. It figures among the few cases in Iberian toponymy where a single name gave rise both to a kingdom and to its ancient commercial capital.

Evolution of the name

  1. Cale pre-Roman (probable céltico) before the 1st century BC
  2. Portus Cale Latin 1st — 5th century
  3. Portucale late Latin / Romance 6th — 12th century
  4. Porto Portuguese from the 13th century

Reflections, to the letter

The Sé do Porto —⁠a 12th-century Romanesque cathedral on the highest hill of the old city⁠— is the official starting point of the Camino Portugués Central. From its forecourt, looking north, you see the first of the yellow arrows that mark the six hundred kilometres to Santiago. The south bank of the Douro, where pre-Roman Cale once stood, today houses the port wine cellars: two thousand years later, the name of the port still produces what a port should produce.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Onomatologist
A specialist in onomastics, the linguistic discipline that studies proper names — of persons (anthroponyms), places (toponyms) and institutions.
Pre-Roman
Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.

Sources

  • Machado, J.P. — Dicionário Onomástico Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa (Lisboa: Confluência, 1984)
  • Menéndez Pidal, R. — Toponimia prerrománica hispana (Madrid: Gredos, 1968)
  • Mattoso, J. — Identificação de um país: Portugal, 1096⁠—⁠1325 (Lisboa: Estampa, 1985)

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 Portugués

  1. ··· toward Santiago
  2. Barcelos
  3. Pedra Furada
  4. Rates
  5. Arcos
  6. Vairão
  7. Vilarinho
  8. Porto
  9. Vila Nova de Gaia
  10. Grijó
  11. São João da Madeira
  12. Oliveira de Azeméis
  13. Albergaria-a-Velha
  14. Águeda
  15. ··· toward the start