The men of wavering faith: on the origins of Arabic personal and place names in the Duero Basin

Abstract

This article attempts to explain the origins of the many personal and place names of apparent Arabic origin in the Duero Basin in Northern Spain and Portugal. The abundance of such names is surprising in a region that seems to have been only briefly under direct Andalusi control. The three hypotheses that have been used to explain the phenomenon will be studied in turn. The first hypothesis considers the names to be the result of migration to the North of persecuted Christians from al-Andalus during the ninth and tenth centuries. Although such migration seems to have taken place, I argue against it being responsible for the names in question. The second hypothesis considers acculturation from across the Andalusi border. There seems to be some validity to this hypothesis as an explanation for many descriptive place names to be found in the southern extremes of the region, but it fails to explain the abundance of Arabic names further north. Examining a third possibility—the so-called “Berber hypothesis”—I conclude that the northernmost concentrations of Arabic names in fact have their origins in the eighth-century conquest and settlement of the area by Romance-speaking North Africans and the early conversion of a significant part of the autochthonous population.