Villanúa
HuescaAragón
Transparent Romance compound Villa Nova ('new town'), with the Aragonese phonetic peculiarity of preserving the unstressed final -a and stressing the penultimate syllable as acute —Villa-nóva > Villanúa—. It designated the late medieval foundation of the present nucleus, an 11th-century repopulation over a small previous settlement of the valley.
The formula villa nova, already discussed at Vilanova de Arousa, was applied throughout Romania to name late foundations on previously unpopulated or reorganised ground. In the Aragonese Pyrenees, the phrase was applied frequently between the 9th and 12th centuries, during the repopulation phase directed from the Pyrenean counties. The Aragonese form Villanúa presents an accentual peculiarity: instead of the displacement of the stress to the Castilian model Villanueva, Aragonese preserved the pronunciation with hiatus and acute accent on the penultimate syllable, a phoneme typical of Pyrenean speech. The nucleus preserves the parish church of San Esteban (16th century) and a megalithic dolmen, the Dolmen de las Güixas, one kilometre from the village —proof that the place was inhabited long before the toponym.
Evolution of the name
- villa nova late Latin 5th–9th centuries
- Villanova medieval Aragonese 11th century
- Villanúa modern Aragonese from the 15th century
Glossary
- Dolmen of Las Güixas
- Megalithic corridor sepulchre with quadrangular chamber, dated between 3500 and 2500 BC, located one kilometre from Villanúa on the livestock transhumance route. Popular Aragonese toponymy named it 'of the Witches' (güixa) for the tradition of nocturnal gatherings attributed to the place. It has been catalogued as a Site of Cultural Interest since 1976.
- Phrase
- A combination of words functioning as a single grammatical unit (noun + adjective, verb + object). In toponymy, phrases tend to agglutinate: Villanueva, Fuentespina, Molinaseca.
Sources
- Comarca de La Jacetania — Patrimonio
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Camino Aragonés