Toponimia vasca en la comarca de Belorado (Burgos)

Abstract

This article studies the peculiar Basque toponymy found in the upper valleys of the River Oca and the Tirón-Urbión watershed (Burgos). The author bases himself on this toponymy to propose a hypothesis of Basque-Castilian bilingualism in the area until the latter centuries of the Middle Ages. The article does not simply offer a long list of Basque toponyms, but also delves into linguistic matters related to hybridisation, translation or simple substitution of primitive Basque forms and, more importantly, deals with the intellectual reflections that this historical fact has generated.

After attributing the unusual continuation of hundreds of Basquisms to the existence of a large amount of common land distributed over the area under study, reference is made to different archive sources and, fundamentally, to a new interpretation of the certificates in the chartulary of San Millán de la Cogolla to reveal the Basque names of those villages situated in a small area to the south of the municipal district of Belorado, at the foot of the “Sierra de la Demanda”: the Valley of San Vicente.