Ribadavia

The name is a crossing of waters. Ribadavia is ripa Aviae, 'the bank of the Avia', after the river that here gives its waters to the Miño. The first part, ripa, is Latin —⁠the bank, the same as 'riverside'⁠—⁠; the second, Avia, is much older: a pre-Roman hydronym from the Paleo-European water-root *av-, *aw-, the one that names rivers across half of Europe. The town that grew on that bank was capital of the Kingdom of Galicia under García II in the 11th century, keeps one of the best-preserved Jewish quarters in the country, and is the capital of O Ribeiro: the wine made here is the one the muleteers' mules carried, the arrieiros who name the Camino. The toponym, without knowing it, sums up the route: old water, a Latin bank, and a cargo that climbed northward.