Spanish words from Gaulish
5 Spanish words with Gaulish in their history, whether borrowed directly or passed on through other languages.
camino
It is inherited from Old Spanish camino, inherited from Vulgar Latin cammīnus (“way, road”). The Latin word is first recorded in Spain, in the 7th century, in a text from before 680. It is of Celtic…
cargar
It is inherited from Late Latin carricāre (“to load a cart”). Old Spanish cargar had the same form. The Latin verb is found in the Visigothic Code and other texts of the Visigothic and Merovingian…
carro
It is inherited from Latin carrus (“a Gallic wagon”), and Old Spanish already had the same form carro. The same Latin word is Portuguese carro, Galician carro, Asturian carru, Catalan carro, Occitan…
mina
1. The word for a mine is probably borrowed from French mine, which is from Gaulish *meina (“ore, raw metal”). Corominas compares Irish méin (“ore, metal; mine”) and Welsh mwyn (“ore”), and derives…
pieza
It is inherited from Old Spanish pieça, inherited from Late Latin pettia (“piece”), which is from Gaulish *pettyā. Thurneysen showed that the word goes back to a Celtic form kept in the insular…