São João da Madeira

Camino Portugués · Camino Portugués de la Costa

Distrito de AveiroPortugal

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.

'Saint John of the Wood': parish dedication to John the Baptist + reference to the wooded mountain the town crossed. Madeira here retains the medieval sense of 'forest, wooded land', earlier than the modern sense of 'wood (material)'.

Jacobean hagiotoponymy covers much of Portugal: entire towns took the name of their patron when they were constituted as parishes. São João da Madeira is one of several São João differentiated by a geographical genitive —⁠alongside São João da Pesqueira, São João da Talha, São João da Boa Vista⁠—⁠. The second element, da Madeira, refers neither to the Atlantic island nor to the building material, but to the dense forest that covered the Pindelo range until 19th-century deforestation: madeira still preserved in medieval Portuguese the Latin sense materia 'mature forest, wooded mountain'.

Evolution of the name

Sancti Iohannis de Maderia medieval Latin 12th — 14th century
São João da Madeira Portuguese from the 15th century

Reflections, to the letter

In 1088 a document names the place 'Uilla de Sancto Ioanne de Mateira': 'madeira' then meant woodland, thicket, not the carpenter's plank. Almost nothing remains of the forest that gave the name: the town is now Portugal's footwear capital, a floor of factories and moulds. The walker crosses a city of leather and machinery whose name, even so, still says 'Saint John of the wood'.

Sources

Machado, J.P. — Dicionário Onomástico Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa

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Camino Portugués

Evolution of the name

Reflections, to the letter

Languages of origin

Themes

Origin status

Sources