Camino del Mar
At Neda, after skirting the whole Cantabrian coast, this Camino joins the Camiño Inglés for the final days to Santiago.
The Camino del Mar does what its name says: it never leaves the Cantabrian Sea. From Ribadeo, on the border with Asturias, it runs the whole northern shelf of Lugo —the Mariña— and the Ortegal shore, hugging the beaches, the cliffs and the tuna ports.
Its names are a lesson in coast: Foz, the mouth of the river; Cedeira, the old Roman salting factory; Ribadeo, the bank of the Eo; Ortigueira, the nettle-ground over the largest ría of the north. Toponymy of salt water and seafaring trade, of two thousand years of people looking out to sea.
On reaching Neda, at the head of the ría of Ferrol, the Camino del Mar hands over the baton: it joins the Camiño Inglés for the final days inland to Santiago. It is the longest of the Galician coastal ways, and the one that best keeps, in every name, the murmur of the Cantabrian.
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Transparent compound: riba (from the Latin ripa 'bank, shore') + de Eo, the hydronym of the river that marks the border between Asturias and Galicia: 'the bank of the Eo'. The toponym Eo is pre-Roman, possibly pre-Indo-European, with no consensus etymology.
From the Galician barreiro 'clay-pit, mudflat' (from barro, 'clay', plus the suffix -eiro), in the plural: 'the clay-pits', the places where clay was dug.
From the Latin fauce 'throat, jaws', applied to a river's mouth: 'the mouth of the river', here that of the Masma into the Cantabrian Sea. Not to be confused with hoz 'sickle', of another root.
Of unresolved origin. The Real Academia Galega rejects the popular explanations —burel (coarse cloth or heraldic band), the buoy— and points to a personal name, without fixing the etymon.
Of disputed etymology: from the Latin cervus 'deer' —an animal toponym— or from a pre-Roman base *(s)kerbh- 'sharp, cutting', which would make it a name of the terrain.
From the Latin Iovis, '(consecrated to) Jupiter': probably a villa Iovii over an old Roman cult of the god. Iove > Xove, with the Galician x-.
From the Latin urticaria 'place of nettles' (from urtica, 'nettle'): a plant-name, 'the nettle-ground'. It names the largest ría of the north Galician coast.
From the Latin cetaria 'salting factory, fishery of great fish' (from cetus, 'cetacean, large fish'): a Roman name of the fishing coast.
It is not 'valley of wine'. Valdoviño comes, on the best-argued reading, from the Germanic personal name Baldovino —the estate of a certain Baldovino—; another makes it Val de Aviño, on a pre-Roman hydronym.
Pre-Roman toponym of opaque meaning. The most sustained hypotheses derive it from a hydronymic base prior to Romanisation, probably linked to the notion of 'watercourse, wet moorland', attested in toponyms of the Atlantic northwest. The medieval form Nesa appears in the records of the San Martiño monastery in the 11th century.
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