Portus Cale (
Latin for
Port of Cale) was the old name of an ancient town and port in current day
Portugal. It was located in the
north of Portugal, in the area of today's
Grande Porto.
History
Cale was the name of an early settlement located at the mouth of the
Douro River, which flows into the
Atlantic Ocean in the north of what is now Portugal.
Some historians have argued that Greeks were the first to settle Cale and that the name derives from the Greek word
kallis, 'beautiful', referring to the beauty of the Douro valley. Others have hypothesized that the word Cale cames from the Latin for 'warm' (Portus Cale thus meaning Warm Port). The main explanation for the name, however, is that it is a
ethnonym derived from the
Castro people that settled in the area of Cale - the
Callaeci. Others, still, believe that the name came from the main goddess this tribe adored, which could be the same
Cailleach in Ireland as
Celts arrived to that island from Gallaecia (which included
Northern Portugal).
Hector Boece said Portugal derived from Porto Gatelli the name
Gatelo gave to
Braga when he settled there while others say he gave that name to
Porto The names "Callaici" and "Cale" are the origin of today's:
Gaia,
Galicia, and the "Gal" root in "Portugal". The meaning of Cale or "Calle" is however not fully understood.
Around
200 BCE, the
Romans began to take the
Iberian Peninsula from the
Carthaginians during the
Second Punic War, and in the process conquered Cale and renamed it Portus Cale. This was done by the general
Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus around 136 BC. At the end of Brutus' campaigns,
Rome controlled the territory between the Douro and Minho rivers plus probable extensions along the coast and in the interior. It was only under
Augustus, however, at the end of the
1st century BC, that present north
Portugal and
Galicia were fully pacified and under Roman control.
All these region would fall under
Suebi dominion between 410 and 584. These
Germanic invaders settled mainly in the areas of
Braga (Bracara Augusta),
Porto (Portus Cale),
Lugo (Lucus Augusti) and
Astorga (Asturica Augusta). Bracara Augusta, the modern city of
Braga and former capital of Roman
Gallaecia, became the capital of the Suebi.
Another Germanic people, the
Visigoths, also invaded the
Iberian Peninsula and would eventually conquer the Suebi kingdom in 584. The region around Cale became known by the Visigoths as
Portucale. Portus Cale would fall under the
Moorish Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in
711.
In
868,
Vímara Peres, a
Christian warlord from
Gallaecia and a vassal of the King of
Asturias,
Léon and
Galicia,
Alfonso III, was sent to
reconquer and secure from the Moors the area from the
Minho River to the
Douro River, including the city of Portus Cale, founded the First County of Portugal or
Condado de Portucale. Portus Cale is thus the former name of current day
Porto and
Vila Nova de Gaia's riverside area, that would be used to name the whole region and, after, the country.
Portugal's name origin
Portugal's name derives from the Roman name
Portus Cale, as well as the city of
Porto.
Portucale evolved into
Portugale during the 7th and 8th centuries, and by the 9th century, that term was used extensively to refer to the region between the rivers Douro and
Minho, the Minho flowing along what would become the northern border between Portugal and
Spain.
Related terms
Some South East European tongues name
orange after Portugal, which was formerly the main source of imports of sweet oranges. Examples are
Bulgarian portokal [портокал],
Greek portokali [πορτοκάλι],
Romanian portocală and
Georgian phortokhali [ფორთოხალი]. Also in
South Italian dialects (
Neapolitan), orange is named
portogallo or
purtualle, literally "the Portuguese ones". Related names can also be found in non-European languages:
Turkish Portakal,
Arabic al-burtuqal [البرتقال],
Persian porteghal [پرتقال] and
Amharic birtukan.
See also
