You will know them by their names. Toponymy and Heritage.

This past April, the Albacete Botanical Garden hosted the “1st Conference on Name and Toponymy of Albacete”, organized by the Institute of Albacete Studies. These striking terms contain a lot of meaning, tradition and knowledge, and are sciences that are extremely useful for our work.

Onomastics is a branch of Lexicography that is responsible for the study and cataloguing of proper names. It includes other disciplines such as Anthroponymy, Bionymy, Odonymy and Toponymy, which deal with the study of the names of people, living beings, roads and places or geographical features. All these branches are intertwined, since a place can bear the name of a plant, an animal or a person, or be a sum of these; and knowing the origin of the name of a place can provide us with clues about its history and its meaning for those who populated it. Hence its importance for understanding and interpreting Heritage.

Throughout the different sessions and communications of these Conference, the papers highlighted the peculiarities of Albacete's toponymy, a territory with a rich documentary collection, both written and oral, and where a large number of place names have been practically fossilized since many centuries ago. The very name of Albacete has always given us a clue about it.

But as soon as we search, we also find examples of what we have pointed out so far. Places with names related to the presence of plants, such as in El Sabinar, El Masegoso, La Zarza or La Noguera; with animals such as Las Encebras, Alto de Las Avutardas, Cerro Lobo or Las Zorreras; people such as Casas de Lázaro, Corral de Vicente, Cueva del Rubio or Casas de Juan Núñez; and also related to the extractive or manufacturing activities carried out in these places, as in the cases of La Mierera, La Grana, Carboneras de la Carrasca or La Calera, since it would be collected there respectively mining, grain, and coal would be manufactured and lime; or the presence of signs of old towns, such as Los Paredazos, Casas Viejas or Los Villares.

On many occasions they seem to be names with a clear origin and foundation: if there are brambles, it will be called La Zarza, just as if there are female sabinas and the place is a hill, let's call it Collado de las Sabinas. But it's wise to take precautions, and that's where science comes to the rescue. Toponymy, as a science of synthesis, will attempt to compose a whole with the different parts. Toponyms change diachronically with the landscape, population or migratory trends, making names mutable to adapt them to the new reality or perception. Thus, a prefix Juan- may have derived from a Source-Source (going from hydronym to anthroponym), a Lion (as in Fuente del León) may be the adaptation of the Arabic word Al-Uyun (plural of Ayn, fountain, eye or mantial), as the suffix -gordo in Villalgordo can also come from the Arabic Gudur (pond, lagoon) or San Jorge, from Burg (tower).

Onomastics and Toponymy are fundamental tools for knowledge and, therefore, the conservation of our heritage. But it is also a great help to avoid, as far as possible, the tragic and irremediable loss of ancestral knowledge that comes with the departure of our elders, as well as alleviating the dependence on reliability of new technologies, such as the ever-present GPS. At least, when I'm in the field, I value more the customary experience in the explanations of the countryman who is an expert in his territory, than the impersonal indications of an electronic device (it's nothing personal, Siri and Google maps).

José Vicente Rodríguez, Archaeology