Sevilla

The toponym carries four historical stages in its three syllables. The pre-Roman form Spal or Hispal would have been the indigenous name of the Turdetanian settlement on the Guadalquivir floodplain; the Romans Latinised it as Hispalis around the 1st century BC, granting it the rank of colonia under Julius Caesar. When the Arabs conquered Baetica in 711, they did not impose a new name: they took late Latin Spalis and adapted it to their phonotactics as Ishbiliya (إشبيلية), with the prothetic e typical of Arabic before initial consonant clusters (parallel to Spagna → Isbaniyya). After six centuries of Muslim rule, Ferdinand III conquered the city in 1248 and the Castilians inherited the Arabic form, not the Latin one: Ishbiliya → Sevilla. The curious thing about the case is that Sevilla is etymologically a Roman name passed through Arabic and returned to Castilian — the only major toponym on the Camino that preserves this triple layer intact. Starting point of the Vía de la Plata since the 9th century, when Cordoban Mozarabs began pilgrimaging to Santiago.