Boimorto and Bois de Gures

Today we look at two places called Boimorto: Boimorto, a village and parish in the municipality of Vilamarín (Ourense), and Boimorto, a parish and municipality in the province of A Coruña.

These place names belong to two stony spots. The stony character shared by the places called Boimorto appears again in a document from 1292 that mentions a place que chaman a Pena do Boy morto (“which they call the Rock of Boy morto”) (M. Lucas and P. P. Lucas, San Pedro de Ramirás. Un monasterio femenino en la Edad Media, page 441).

The written form Boy morto, as two words, suggests a place name made up of the simple words Boi and Morto, which, as we shall see, also name stones and stony places on their own.

So Boi, which is very common, always names rocks, on land or at sea. Among many others, Boi is the name of a rocky point in the parish and municipality of Baiona (Pontevedra).

O Boi, Os Bois and O Corno do Boi are the names of a point and of some reefs in the parish of Xaviña, in the municipality of Camariñas (A Coruña). Note that O Corno do Boi looks like a tautology made of a possible root boi, “stone”, and the pre-Celtic corn, “stone”. Boi Grande and Boi Pequeno are small islets of solid rock off the Orzán point (A Coruña).

Boidecanto, a coastal point in the parish of Liáns (Oleiros, A Coruña), is a possible repetition or tautology of “stone”, built from boi and the pre-Indo-European cant, also “rock” or “stone”.

Boicornello, a village in the parish of San Pedro do Val de Xestoso (Monfero, A Coruña), is another tautology like O Corno do Boi above, a name that, besides the rocks of Xaviña, also belongs to a stony range of hills in the municipality of Friol (Lugo).

As for Morto, we think it comes from an Indo-European root mor, “stone”, and it too names stony places. Such are the ones discussed in another article: Morro Mortaxa (a tautology of mor) and Punta Mortaza, very rocky headlands on the beach of Valdaio, in the municipality of Carballo (A Coruña).

The word morto also appears in the place name Mouromorto, another possible tautology of mor that always names very stony sites. With these very marked features, there is a place called Mouromorto in the parish of Calo (Teo, A Coruña), which, despite appearances, has nothing to do with mouros mortos (“dead Moors”). The same goes for Boimorto: rather than a boi morto (“dead ox”), we believe it repeats “stone” twice, with an uncertain but likely root boi, “stone” (which we have not found in the specialist literature), and the pre-Indo-European mor, “stone”, which several authors accept and discuss.

The misleading transparency of the name Boimorto, which suggests a mistaken boi morto, is also reflected in old documents. In a text from 994 about the Boimorto in the province of A Coruña we read: ...ubi dicunt Boue mortuo (“where they call it Dead Ox”) (López Ferreiro, Historia de la Iglesia de Santiago, appendix 2, page 195).

In our view, this document records a false Latinisation, which shows that when it was written the name Boimorto already had the same form as today, or one very close to it: the medieval scribe, linking Boimorto to a real flesh-and-blood ox, wrote it down in the false form Boue mortuo.

In folklore, the name Boi is again linked to the animal it seems to name. The so-called Bois de Gures, two rocky islets near the Ézaro inlet (A Coruña), are said to be a pair of enchanted oxen that, fleeing the asolagamento (the flooding) of the nearby city of Duio, drowned and were turned into the rocks that form those islets.

Fernando Cabeza

La Voz de Galicia Saturday, 21 March 1992

There is also a popular legend about the name of Boimorto.