Salas

Camino Primitivo

Principado de Asturias

Substantivised plural of Latin sala, a word of Germanic origin —⁠from Gothic or Frankish sal- 'manorial house, noble residence'⁠— that late Latin adopted to designate the main hall of a villa or palace. The toponym commemorates a group of seigneurial residences documented in the area since the Early Middle Ages.

The word sala is one of the most widespread Germanic loanwords in late Latin. The root sal-, present in Gothic saljan and Old High German sal, designated the main room of the manorial house —⁠a single large space where relatives, vassals, mercenaries and guests gathered, and where one ate, slept and administered justice. When the Germanic peoples —⁠Goths, Sueves, Franks⁠— settled in the Roman West, spoken Latin adopted the word as a prestigious synonym of aula, 'chamber, salon'. From there it passed to all the Romance languages with the same basic meaning that modern Spanish preserves. In toponymy, the substantivised plural Salas was applied to villages or hamlets formed in the shadow of an early-medieval seigneurial residence, or of a group of them. The toponym is frequent in Asturias and inland Galicia, regions where the Asturian-Leonese aristocracy multiplied fortified houses between the 9th and 12th centuries. Salas (Asturias), Salás (Lugo), Sala (Pontevedra), Salas Altas, Salas Bajas (Huesca) —⁠all refer to the same architectural prototype.

Evolution of the name

  1. sal- Germanic (Gothic/Frankish) 4th — 6th centuries
  2. sala late Latin 6th — 9th centuries
  3. Salas medieval Asturleonese from the 10th century

Reflections, to the letter

The village name describes a medieval architecture. A sala was, around the year 900, the fortified house of an Asturian-Leonese lord: a single large space where one ate, slept, administered justice and welcomed the pilgrim. When several seigneurial residences were grouped together, the village was named in the plural — Salas. The medieval tower preserved in the village centre —⁠from the 14th century, residence of the Valdés-Salas⁠— is the late heir of those fortified houses that justified the name. The word travelled from Gothic to late Latin and from there to all the Romance languages; the modern 'salón' is the same root with an augmentative suffix.

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

confirmed

Glossary

Fortified house
An early-medieval seigneurial residence, midway between the rural house and the castle. A square- or rectangular-plan building with thick walls, few openings and sometimes an adjoining tower, raised in frontier or depopulated territory to serve as a refuge and administrative centre of the owning lineage.
Loanword
A word that one language borrows from another and integrates into its lexicon, with or without phonetic adaptation. Late Latin took in hundreds of Germanic loanwords during the settlement of Goths, Sueves and Franks: sala, bandera, guerra, guardia, blanco.
Substantivised plural
A device by which a plural noun is fixed as a place name without the determiner or noun that governed it: salas = '[place of the] (seigneurial) halls'. Frequent in early-medieval peninsular toponymy.

Sources

  • García Arias, X.Ll. — Toponimia asturiana
  • Concello de Salas — Archivo histórico municipal

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Camino Primitivo

  1. ··· toward Santiago
  2. Borres
  3. Lavadoira
  4. Tineo
  5. Casazorrina
  6. La Espina
  7. Bodenaya
  8. Salas
  9. Premoño
  10. Cornellana
  11. Cabruñana
  12. Grado
  13. Oviedo