A is for Abdalajís, Z is for Zuqueca
The atlas of Spain is laden with place names of Arabic origin, owing much to the nearly eight hundred year period of Arab rule there. It seems as if every other village, river, or mountain in Andalusia has an Arabic etymology. The term Andalusia itself owes something to the Arabs, its origin coming from Al-Andalus, as the Arabs called this region, which itself comes from the Latin term Vandalusia, or Land of the Vandals, the Germanic tribe that invaded and settled there in the 5th C.
In turn, the Spanish overseas empire spread these place names to other parts of the world, so it is not unusual to overhear hints of the Arabic language in towns, cities, and islands in the southwestern United States, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, the Philippines, and the Solomons, and also in places no Spanish conquistador or explorer ever set foot.
Indeed, one could travel from the town of Jarque- from sharq, for East- near Zaragosa, to the town of Algarbe- from gharb, for West- near Seville, and all the way to the hamlet of Chaufí- from jauf, for North- near Almería, and not exhaust all the points on the compass where Arabic still echoes in Spain, even when looking down from Spain's highest mountain, Mulhacén (3,478 meters), which derives its name from the penultimate Arab ruler of Granada, Mulay Abu al-Hassan Ali.
The Spanish Arabist Miguel Asín Palacios (1871-1944) compiled the gazetteer Contribución a la toponimia árabe de España of 1,200 Spanish place names with known roots and 250 places with unknown roots. This provides a good starting point to recognize the most common Arabic-to-Spanish etymologies, and also to search for some of the more obscure. He based his study on a close reading of the Arab geographers Yaqut, Idrisi, and Al-Qazwini, as well as more esoteric sources like Al-Qalqashandi's fourteen volume encyclopedia of curiosities Subh al-A'shaa, or The Dawn of the Night Blind One.
But caution is required when seeking roots borrowed from other languages, because national pride and even ideology can come into play. Some Spaniards are averse to thinking, even when the evidence is obvious, that their mother tongue, and especially the names of beloved hometowns, owe anything to outsiders. Conversely, others are quick to find so-called Arabismos where none exist, hearing traces of indigenous paleohispanic languages such as Iberian or Tartessian, or even introduced tongues like Phoenician, a Semitic language, and Latin and Greek, which all preceded Arabic to the Iberian Peninsula.
Asín Palacios himself is frequently inconsistent, and much of his work is questioned by modern scholarship. Luis Molina, a researcher at the Escuela de Estudios Arabes in Granada, notes that his fellow philologist often based his findings on what his ear told him, not on where the documents led him. “Kindly put, he engaged in pre-scientific methods,” says Molina. As examples of more rigorous research, he cites the work of the late Elías Terés on the names of rivers and Joaquín Vallvé's still incomplete geographical dictionary of Al-Andalus.
Despite the difficulties and pitfalls, tracing even hypothetical Arabic etymologies on the Spanish map can have its rewards. What is needed is a bit of guesswork, a keen radar for words in many languages, and the willingness to be proven wrong.
The most certain place names begin with clear markers of Arabic origin, often combined with the Spanish plural or other lexicographical variants. Such are...
“Al-” (from the Arabic definite article al-), with the examples Alberca in Alicante, from al-birka, the pond, Alboreca in Guadalajara, from al-buraika, for the little pond, Albires, from al-b'ir, or the well, and Alborache, from al-buraij, the little tower, and also including such redundancies as El Algarabejo, La Alcaidía, and Las Aljabaras;
“Guad-” (from the Arabic word wadi, or river valley), with the examples Guadalquivir, from wadi al-kabir, or big river, Guadalcázar, from wadi al-qasar, or river of the palace, Guadalcotón, from wadi al-qoton, or river of cotton, and Guadalajara, from wadi al-hijara, or river of stones;
“Gibr-” (from jabal, or mountain), with the example Gibralfaro, from jabal al-farouq, or Mountain of Al-Farouq (an epithet for Omar, the second caliph), and also Jabalcol in Granada, from jabal al-kohl, or mountain of kohl, Jabalí, mountainous, and the Río Jabalón, big mountain, in the Spanish augmentative form;
and “Medina-” (city), with the examples Medinas, Medinaceli and Medinilla, in the Spanish diminutive form.
Two close but separate etymologies- the Arabic ibn (bani, pl.) for son and binaa for building- between them account for some 125 entries, everywhere from Benacazón in Seville, for House of Qasum, and Binixidi in Mallorca, for the Sons of Sayyidi, to Belmuza in Málaga, for Son of Moses, and also in such “V” towns as Vinaixa, for Son of 'Aisha, in Lérida and Vinatea, for Son of 'Atiyya, in Albacete.
It is not unusual to see different places names from the same Arabic root spelled exactly alike, only with and without the definite article, such as Alfar in Barcelona, from al-fakhar, or the pottery and Far in Lérida, just as one can find the same proper name, with and without the nisba, or patronymic, as in Ferez in Albacete and Benifarés in Alicante, both named after a man named Faris.
The prefix abu, for father, often elided and then followed either by a proper name or a title, also adds to a long list- Abofageg in Navarra, for Father of Hajjaj; Albocabe in Soria, for Father of the Ka'b, or High Ranking One; Beceite in Teruel, for Father of Zayd; Belcayde in Castellón, for Father of the Qa'id, or leader; Bonnabe in Mallorca, for Father of Nabih; Boquiñeni in Zaragosa, for Father of Kinani; Bufali in Valencia, for Father of Khalid; and Bullaque in Ciudad Real, for Father of Hakam.
The Spanish prefix Cala-, from qala'a, or castle, generates Calatañazor, from qala'at al-nusour, or castle of the eagles, and Calatayud, from qala'at Ayyub, or castle of Ayyub (Jacob), just as the prefix Car-, from qarya, or village, gives Cariatiz in Almeria, from qaryat 'Izz, or village of Izz, and Cartágima in Málaga, from qaryat al-jami', or village of the mosque.
Similarly, the prefixes Azn- and Izn-, from hisn, or fort, lead to Aznaitín, from hisn al-tin, or fort of the fig, and Iznájar, from hisn 'ashir, or lively fort. Not to be overlooked are the simple place names Alcalá in Seville, Alisne in Córdoba, and Alcaria in Cádiz.
Some places are formed from compounds of two equally well recognized Arabic words, such as Guadalmedina, or river of the city, and Guadalcanal, or river of the canal, from the Andalusian Arabic word al-qanal, whether in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or the Iberian Peninsula. Three Spanish toponyms familiar to almost everyone are from Arabic- La Mancha (as in Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote), from manjah, or upland; Gibraltar, from jabal Tarik, or Mountain of Tarik (ibn Ziyad), the Muslim general who led the Arab conquest of Spain in 711, a place name that has spread to towns in Michigan and Canada, a lake in Alaska, a national park in Australia, and a stretch of England's North Sea coastline; and Trafalgar, from tarf al-agharr, or headland of bedazzlement, which lends its name to a small landlocked town in Indiana and to the most famous square in London.
Some Arabic nouns begin with so called “sun letters” (such as “s”, “z”, “n”, “r”, and “t”) which, when spoken, assimilate the “l” of the preceding definite article “al-”, so that they are written in Spanish as they sound, without an “l”, as in the place names Adobes, from al-toub, the mud; Acera, from al-sirat, the way; Añover, from al-nawaayil, the gifts; Arrayán, from al-raihan, the myrtle; and Azafor, from al-sukhour, the boulders.
Asín Palacios is not always internally consistent with some etymologies, as he gives Guadalupe, from wadi lupus, or river of the wolf, a mixed Arabic-Latin compound, yet he derives Gibraleón from jabal al-'uyun, for mountain of the springs, assuming a purely Arabic origin, although it could plausibly and just as easily be derived from the mixed compound jabal leo, for mountain of the lion. Similarly, he finds the origin of Valladolid to be balad walid, or town of Walid- for which he cites Al-Qalqashandi's authority, yet sees Villabrágima, in the same province, as another mix of Latin and Arabic, villa and ibrahim, or Abraham.
He does not venture a guess at the origin of the town of Bobadilla, but it is possibly a Spanish diminutive of Boabdil, the name the Spaniards gave to Abu Abdallah Muhammad xii, the last Nasrid ruler of Granada. The town, aptly, is along the rail line to the seaside town of Málaga, facing Boabdil's Moroccan land of exile. Neither does he venture that Málaga itself might originate from the Arabic malaha, or salt mine, although the town of La Malahá and its outlying hamlet Malá are not far.
Some of the more curious etymologies are the towns of Bete, in Albacete, from bayt, house; Gorafe, from ghurfa, room; Berita, from barida, cold; Jauca, from shawka, thorn; and Olías, from 'uliyya, height. The towns of Gor in Granada, Algar in Alicante, and Moguer in Huelva derive from ghour, declivity, and its cognates ghar and mughar, both meaning cave.
Arabic is a highly generative language, meaning that the basic roots of its vocabulary can create many other words. In a parallel fashion, a single Arabic word might generate many Spanish place names. The word al-buhaira, the lake (a diminutive form of al-bahr, the sea) gives us the towns Albuhera in Cáceres, and the variants Albufera in Alicante, Albojaira and Albuferas in Almería, and Albuera in Badajoz, as well as Albufereta, in the Spanish diminutive form, which makes it something of a double diminutive. And this does not even include Seville's more properly spelled La Buhaira district.
Following is an alphabetic list of Spanish toponyms that owes much to the pioneering work of Miguel Asín Palacios, even where he goes wrong.
A is for Alhambra, California and Illinois, from al-hamraa, The Red One
B is for Benavídez, Argentina, and Benavides, Texas, from Ibn Abidis. Son of Abidis
C is for Calatrava, the Phillipines, and Santiago de Calatrava, Jaén, from qala'at Rabah, Castle of Rabah, named for Ali bin Rabah al-Lahmi
D is for Daramazán, Toledo, from dar al-mahsan, House of the Stronghold, from the same root as Alisne, Iznatoraf, Aznalfarache, etc.
E is for El Burgo, Málaga, from al burj, the Tower
F is for Farfán, Panama, and Faraján, Malaga, from farhan, Happy
G is for Ganame, Zamora, from ghanam, Sheep
H is for Huete, Cuenca, a less common Spanish derivation from wadi
I is for Isnalloz, Granada, from hisn al-loz, Fort of the Almond
J is for Jaraiz, Cáceres, from haraa'ith, Plowmen
L is for Lentegí, Granada, from al-intishaat, Liveliness
M is for Mezquitilla, Málaga, from masjid, Mosque, in the Spanish diminutive form, not to be confused with Mezquital, Mexico, from the Nahuatl word mizquitl, Mesquite tree
N is for La Nora, Asturias, from na'oura, Persian wheel
O is for Olocau, Valencia, from al-'uqaab, Eagle
P is for Purchil, Granada, from burj hilal, Tower of the Crescent Moon
Q is for Quentár, Granada- presumably from qintar, Hundred Weight, or possibly from qantara, Bridge or Arch
R is for Russafa, Valencia, and also Resafa, Syria, not from al-rasafa, the Paved or Smoothed Place, but rather Arabized from a similar sounding ancient Akkadian language root with a different meaning. Yaqut mentions nine garden-like places with this name in the Middle East, including districts of Baghdad, Damascus, and Basra
S is for Senija, Alicante, from Sanhaja, Arabic name for a major North African tribe, known in Berber language as the Iznagen, from aznig, meaning oasis
T is for Talará, Peru and Granada, hara'at al-arab, District of the Arabs
U is for Ulea, Murcia- no known etymology according to Asín Palacios, presumably from the Arabic root 'alaa, To Be Lofty
V is for Las Vegas, Nevada and Argentina, from buq'a, Plain, in the Spanish plural form
Z is for Calle Zacatín, a street in Granada, from saqaatiin, Scrap Sellers