Home " Toponymy " COL: etymology and definition

COL: etymology and definition

Etymology

Collar comes from the Latin collum, meaning neck. The word col is attested in French around the 11th century, but it was not used in its geographical sense until the 17th century, replacing the Old French port. However, it was used from the 15th and 16th centuries in meanings such as the neck of a bladder, then the neck of a vase.

Port comes from an Indo-European root per- which in Latin gave portus , attested from the 10th century in Old French (92 examples from the Pyrenees in the Chauvot).

Not comes from the Latin pandere, passus, and is used from the 11th century in the sense of passage, défilé (passeur in the 12th century). Littré (on 28 meanings of pas) gives the meaning of "narrow and difficult passage in a mountain" with a quotation from Vaugelas for the 13th meaning (11th meaning: passage, 12th: pertuis, 15th: seuil). According to the Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, as early as 1160-1174, pas was used to designate a difficult passage often qualified by the old adjective mal (1176-1181), the origin of today's malpas; replaced (13th century) by mauvais, hence today's mauvais pas and maupas; it was later used to designate a strait (1530) or a defile (1559), both of which are now obsolete, except in toponymy (e.g. pas de Calais, pas de Suse).

Drop comes from the Latin bassus which gave bassiare (lat.vulg.) then baisser (French in the 11th century) and finally baisse (in the 16th century). Littré gives the 3rd meaning (out of 4) as "collapsed ground", but without any reference to the mountain. Since when has it been used to designate a pass? They are mainly found in the Alpes Maritimes (215 examples in the Chauvot)!

Breach attested in French in 1119, is said to come from High German brecha from Frankish breka (218 examples in Chauvot).

Parade (1643) is derived from the Latin filum , giving filare in Low Latin (circa 1160), meaning an enclosed passage (where you can only pass in single file).

Strait is derived, first in the form destreit (1080) from the Latin districtus . The word, initially an adjective, was used to describe a narrow passage (les destreiz passages). It retained this meaning until the 17th century, when it took on its modern meaning of a narrow inlet.

Passage (1080) is derived from the verb passer (1050) from the late Latin passare derived from the Latin passus. It originally designated a mountain pass, a port; there are still many examples of this (121 citations in the Chauvot).

In fact, most of our terms, which are synonymous with col (1), owe nothing to French. They are derived from the many dialects and patois of our three great Romance domains (Oïl, oc and Franco-Provençal) and, of course, also from some of our regional languages (e.g. Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, etc.).

(1) one or two hundred, depending on whether you refer to the glossary compiled from the "Chauvot" or the one I obtained from external sources (see my article "How do you call a pass in France?" RVA no. 6).

Definition

Here are some examples of definitions obtained by consulting standard dictionaries:

1. Petit et Grand Robert: "Depression forming a passage between two mountain peaks", see brèche, défilé, détroit, gorge, pas, port. If we look at these different items, some of which (défilé, détroit, gorge) no longer evoke the idea of a pass for us, we have the impression of going round in circles: à brèche, no geographical reference; à défilé, nothing either, but a reference to couloir and passage, which do evoke the idea of a pass; à gorge, a reference to cañon, col, couloir and porte; à pas, which is so familiar to us, no geographical reference either; only port benefits from the mention: "col des Pyrénées" and if we consult à porte (introduced by gorge!) we will finally find a geographical definition.) you will find a geographical definition: "narrow passage in a mountainous region", which does not necessarily correspond to reality (eg, in Isère, the Col de Porte - redundancy - is not precisely a narrow passage).
2. Le Robert - Dictionnaire historique de la langue française: the pictorial meaning, mountain pass (since 1635), as defined by the Petit and Grand Robert, has gradually eliminated the old terms port, pas (which meant a difficult passage) and détroit, which have all taken on and retained other meanings.
3. Littré: (4th definition out of 8) "The point in a mountain range where the ridge bends, offering a passage from one side to the other, between the attachment points of two buttresses".
4. Larousse du XXème Siècle: "Depressed part of a mountain ridge allowing passage from one side of the mountain to the other". Syn.: defile, strait, gorge, step. Pas is defined as meaning difficult passage and can have the meaning of pass or strait. In the "geography" section, it is stated that the main cause of the formation of passes is the action of torrents which "dig their beds higher and higher into the mountain and end up lowering the separating ridge"! They also determine upstream passes located on the ridgeline between two valleys of opposite direction and flank passes located on the ridgeline between two more or less parallel valleys. All this seems to me curious, to say the least, if not hazardous.
5. Larousse: "The depressed part of a mountain ridge, used as a passage".

None of these definitions seems really satisfactory to a pass hunter who has encountered so many different situations. The last one, the shortest and simplest, seems to me to be the least bad.

Let's take a look at what the geography dictionaries have to say.

First search (Hatier geographical dictionary): "When a ridge line descends and then rises again, it forms a pass". That's good!

Second search (dictionnaire critique de la Documentation Française: les mots de la géographie): "depressed point between two summits, saddle on a ridge, facilitating passage". In the same dictionary, ensellement is defined as "a fairly wide hollow in the profile of a ridge, of an elongated relief, like the back of a horse".

The dictionary also includes the following details:

1. "Every pass is dual: recessed in relation to the ridge line, raised in relation to the road, it separates two mountains as well as two valleys; by walking on the ridges you descend towards the passes, by the road you climb them". Here's an observation that seems quite obvious, yet how many times have I received letters from cyclists wondering whether they had really "crossed" such and such a pass in this "obvious" and unavoidable situation, ... unless you cross all the passes by starting again from the nearest valley (assuming there is still a path)!
2. "Passes sometimes mark the crossing of a border". I think that the term "border" here should be taken in the very general sense of the boundary of a département, canton, commune, etc. and not just a state border, which is a very common occurrence.
3. "The passes are often located in weak structural zones (soft rock, fault lines or crushing) or are lowered by the retreat of valley heads". Geomorphological data that is more convincing than the action of torrents (not to be confused with the action of run-off, which is a determining factor).
4. "Collet: small pass". This mention of the term collet, in its geographical sense, is interesting, as none of the dictionaries cited above mention it, even though the term appears 242 times in the Chauvot! On the other hand, no dictionary mentions the use of this term in the sense of "hill", which is probably twice as common as "col" in many regions such as the Hautes Alpes and Provence.

Pas (after col, the most widely used term: 905 examples in the Chauvot); passage (the sixth most widely used term: 121 examples in the Chauvot); passe (5 examples in the Chauvot, generally used in French to refer to a very high and inaccessible pass) are synonyms for col, close to the English or German pass, and we can see that function takes precedence over form.

As for the hundred or so additional terms that appear in our Chauvot, they are completely ignored, let alone the second hundred or so that I discovered in guidebooks, glossaries, etc. or from the inhabitants of our mountainous regions; local terms superbly ignored by the 'oïl' and 'goguette' topographers who drew up our maps, sprinkling them with tautological references.

At the end of this examination, we can conclude that a collar is characterised by :

1. a preferential passage between two areas (valley, dale, valley, etc.),
2. a structure of very variable size (ranging from a dot to a fairly large hollow).

Can we go further? Would it be interesting to embark on a typology of passes as Ch. Guitton attempted to do in No. 10 of the 100 passes review, identifying and describing ridge line passes, flank passes, syncline bottom passes, combes passes, passes between two cirques, ridge junction passes as well as ridge breaches and ridge breaches, only to conclude that his list could be continued, but that it was all pointless!

The difficulty in defining what a pass is undoubtedly lies in the diversity of the logics involved. There seem to be four:

1. popular logic, for which the notion of a pass is inseparable not only from a characteristic landform (a slope on a ridge forming a neck), but also, and above all, from the presence of a more or less straightforward communication route (i.e. from a passable road to a simple footpath), introducing a dual historical and geographical notion,
2. the scientific logic of geographers, for whom a pass exists as soon as it meets the taxonomic criteria for landforms defined by the discipline (depression on a ridge, forming a pass, whether or not it is part of the local history),
3. the logic of the nomenclateurs (the first, those on the military maps) who, while relying on popular testimony, favoured the national point of view for naming; unfortunately, they were often ignorant of local languages and more or less well trained in scientific definitions,
4. the logic of the "rectifiers" (members of alpine or Pyrenean societies), who were good connoisseurs of the mountains and sometimes of the dialects; they often took the side of the natives, restoring popular appellatives and proper names fairly faithfully; However, in an attempt to give an appearance of scientificity to their sport, they sometimes had a tendency to institute their own conceptions and choice of names, a practice taken to absurd extremes when granting the status of pass to depressions impassable by ordinary mortals.

This improvised concert has given rise to a certain confusion of genres, which varies from region to region. For the most part, the arbitrariness of the maps relates to the choice of the determinant (pass, pitch, gap, collet, passade, etc., or nothing at all) and the problem often concerns not so much the mountains themselves, as the foothills regions where the choice of naming one or other of the historic passages between two localities "col de ..." is sometimes a matter of the purest arbitrariness. Why this one? And not its neighbour, just as "pass" as it is? Hence the frustrations expressed by many members of the Confrérie des 100 Cols. The maps are clearly incomplete, particularly when it comes to secondary passes or passes that have fallen into disuse.

It would undoubtedly be difficult, but perhaps not without interest, from the point of view of heritage restoration, to embark on a more exhaustive inventory of the medium and low mountain passes, in other words a cartography that would aim, on the basis of historical and geographical documentation (old maps, current or old land registers, local guides, local chronicles, etc.), to restore the forgotten passes.

A final remark that has as much to do with etymology as with definition. Whereas for a modern person a pass is a low point in a mountain range, for the Romans and Gallo-Romans it was the highest point on a route. This observation, illustrated by examples such as Gavrus mons on the Peutinger table (today's Col de Cabre), Mont Iseran on the Cassini map (Col de l'Iseran) or Mont Sion (Col de Sion), the highest point on the Geneva-Annecy road, justifies the introduction of mont (and mons) in the glossary, which already includes their equivalents such as the Basque "mendi" or the Gascon "cap".

If you are interested in this subject, please do not hesitate to send me your thoughts or questions, and I will do my best to answer them.

August 1997 - Michel de Brébisson
[email]michel.debrebisson@libertysurf.fr[/email]
- Updated: December 1999