Soutomerille

As we saw in Soto de Luiña (Camino del Norte), souto is the Galician and Portuguese word for the riverside forest, the evolution of Latin saltus with characteristic palatalisation. In Galician toponymy it is one of the most productive appellatives —⁠Souto, As Soutomil, Souto de Aces, Souto da Rocha, Soutomerille⁠— and specifically describes the forests of alder, willow, ash and chestnut that grow on the humid banks. The second element is a Germanic anthroponym: Marili is a Gothic name well attested in early-medieval Leonese charters, with the base mari- ('illustrious, famous' in Gothic, the same element that gives modern Mary, Marie) and affective suffix. The hamlet belongs to the Castroverde council, in the range that separates Asturias from Lugo, and sits in a small wooded floodplain. It preserves one of the oldest rupestral churches in Galicia: San Salvador de Soutomerille, a pre-Romanesque chancel of the 9th century carved into the rock, one of the four documented early-medieval rupestral churches of the northwestern peninsular quadrant.