On the Murcia voice 'merancho' and the toponyms Belinchón (Cuenca) and Maranchón (Guadalajara)

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  • Emilio Nieto Ballester Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/qfilologia.20.7515

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the origin of the word merancho (Murcia), “ditch or secondary irrigation canal”. The explanation is based on comparing this voice with many place names, mainly from Castilla-La Mancha, as Maranchón, Meranchas (El Recuenco), Maranchel (Yunque de Henares, Guadalajara). Afterwards, all this lexical material quoted before is compared with another large number of place names which show without doubt a noun merdancho or similars, as Mierdanchel (Canalejas del Arroyo, Cuenca), Arroyo de Merdancho (Talavera de la Reina, Toledo), etc. The presence in all cases of the stem * merd- serves us to understand the origin and meaning of all of them. We are dealing with the word merda, “shit”, to which was added the ending -ancho. In the phonetic order it is to be noted that merdancho has been altered in merancho in order to break the association with an objectionable word. These removal processes of bad language are not infrequent in place names.

Keywords: spanish toponymy; spanish dialectology; lexicon; suffixation; euphemism.

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Author Biography

Emilio Nieto Ballester, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Department of Classical Studies

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Published

2015-12-29

How to Cite

Nieto Ballester, E. (2015). On the Murcia voice ’merancho’ and the toponyms Belinchón (Cuenca) and Maranchón (Guadalajara). Quaderns De Filologia - Estudis Lingüístics, 20, 111–121. https://doi.org/10.7203/qfilologia.20.7515
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Vol. 20 (2015): TOPONÍMIA ROMÀNICA

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Artículos

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