Rodeiro

The name turns around a wheel, or so it seems. The most accepted base is the Latin rota, 'wheel', with the suffix -arium, and from it come three readings that never quite settle. The first, a 'road of cart-tracks', the way the carts passed. The second, of trade: a place of rotarii, those who made the solid wheels typical of the northwest, documented as early as the year 929. The third steps away from the wheel and seeks a pre-Roman hydronym, a root for 'running water', which would fit the headwaters of the river Arnego where the district sits. The medieval forms —⁠Rodeyro in 1197, 1255, 1355⁠— fix the name but do not resolve the origin. From here too came the Galician surname Rodeiro, born in the medieval land of Camba.