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How to call a pass in France

"Only passes that officially bear this name and appear on the maps ..... will be counted, including passes marked with a summit or directional sign" (Art. 2 of the Club des Cent Cols rules).

It's clear that geology, geomorphology and geography are not enough to define the existence of a mountain pass; it's only the name that establishes its existence.

Conclusion: a pass only exists when it is named.

"... nomination is a metaphysical act of absolute value; it is the solid and definitive union of man and thing, because the raison d'être of the thing is to require a name and the function of man is to speak to give it one".
SARTRE (Situation I)

Is everything clear? Yes, if you know which terms are accepted or acceptable. We're not talking here about the proper name of the collar, but rather the title, in other words the synonyms of the generic word "collar".

A simple experiment, repeated many times, showed me the almost total ignorance of all my interlocutors on this subject. To this simple question: what do you call a pass in France? I get a number of answers varying from two to five different terms in the best of cases, never more than that, whatever the culture or even the particular interest (as a member of our Confrérie) of the person I'm talking to!

In the collection of the Cent Cols magazine, there are two small half-page lists. In the first (cf. no. 8, p. 57) Philippe Giraudin gives fifty-two synonyms with a few comments (details of the meaning of the terms and the geographical locations in which they are used); in the second (cf. no. 15, p. 25) Hervé Lachaume cites sixteen French terms in a list covering six European countries. Finally, very recently Camille Winghardt (see no. 23, p. 26) looked for, and found, one hundred synonyms in the second edition of the Guide Chauvot.

The list published in 1979 by Philippe Giraudin is very interesting because it includes terms that were unknown in the directories available at the time (the first edition of the Chauvot was not published until the end of 1981); Hervé Lachaume's list includes some new terms; Camille Winghardt's article is amusing but lacks rigour: only eighty-four of the one hundred terms cited are actually headings appearing in the second edition of the Guide Chauvot, the other sixteen are either proper names (and not headings) or non-existent terms.

This problem can be tackled in two different ways:

• or by compiling a glossary based on our official list: the book "8500 cols de France" by Robert and Monique Chauvot (plus supplements published or to be published),
• or by creating such a glossary using terms collected from various existing works: dictionaries, glossaries, guides, etc. specialising in geographical terms in French but also in the regional languages, dialects and patois of our country.

The first method led me to a list of 112 terms obtained from the systematic processing of the book "8500 cols de France" by Robert and Monique Chauvot (see GLOSSARY I).

The second method currently leads me to a list of 248 terms obtained from the careful reading of numerous guides, lexicological and geographical works and, more recently, from exchanges with a number of correspondents who, after the first issues of the glossary, were kind enough to share their knowledge and discoveries with me (see GLOSSARY II).

A few comments on these lists:

• the first, thanks to the facilities offered by computers, is virtually certain, although the discovery of a term with a very low frequency of appearance or appearing in an unorthodox position (agglutinative language) cannot be ruled out,
• the second is obviously very different, since it proposes terms that are not yet recognised (insofar as they do not yet appear in our 'bible', the Chauvot) and some of which may be contested. It includes all the terms on Philippe Giraudin's list, but I have not included several of the titles on Hervé Lachaume's list (such as sommet, montagne, montée, division, crête) as I have not yet found any proven equivalent to 'col' in French or in a regional language. Finally, it includes some of Camille Winghardt's sixteen disputed terms.

A few details about these lists:

• in the first, a number of choices had to be made to avoid unduly multiplying the number of references. For example, let's take the term 'collar': firstly, the singular and plural are not disjoined, collar and collars are grouped together; but similarly, under this single term we will find terms such as low collar, high collar, small collar, large collar, false collar, which are therefore considered as qualifying adjectives and not as original terms. The same treatment has been reserved for mauvais, grand, petit pas (as well as malpas and maupas, which is perhaps more debatable) or grande, fausse, double brèche. Many other problems of the same type, for other terms, have been solved in the direction of simplification, the aim not being to multiply the number of terms, but to isolate the original terms,
• in the second, we are faced with a well-known linguistic problem: the variability of dialects and, even worse, patois. Unless you are a specialist in each of these languages, how can you determine whether, for example, one term should not simply be considered as the plural (the feminine) of another? Finally, the meaning of a given term can be debated, because although dialectology and lexicology are established sciences, they do not claim absolute certainty.

How useful can these lists be?

If we believe that the directory of French mountain passes represents a heritage that we are seeking to preserve, it seems to me that in order to establish it as completely as possible, it is necessary to look for mountain passes corresponding to terms not yet included in the first list. Two examples of this type of work

• cot and cotch: the first term appears in the Chauvot (although not extensively, eg: cot de Jou near the Col de Jou (or Croix du cot de Jou); the second term does not appear, does the Ign use it on his maps? I don't know (yet), but here's an example of work to be undertaken,
• the sarrat, sarret, sarrot series: none of these terms (cited by Ph. Giraudin as early as 1979) are found in the Chauvot. I started looking at the TOP 25 above Saint Girons and found a series of "sarrat" which, from the map, seem to be more often in the position of a summit than a pass. This should come as no surprise, as this problem is common for other terms, e.g. collet in the Hautes Alpes. All we need to do is use a geographical criterion to eliminate the summits.

The frequency of use of the 112 terms obviously varies enormously; the table below gives an example of the 14 most frequently used terms and how often they are used:

For more details, see the GLOSSARY F.

The frequency of lesser-used terms is all the lower because they are victims of the phenomenon of pleonastic constructions, the result of deaf dialogue between French cartographers (who were very sure of themselves) and patois farmers in the 19th century, when the maps (known as état-major maps) were being drawn up, the ancestors of our top25, hence the cols du Pas, de la Baisse, de la Collette, de la Courade, des Coutchets, de Creu, de la Fenêtre, de Foce, de Port, de Porte, du Pertus, de Porteille, de Portet, de Pourtanelle, du Trou, du Seuil, du Sattel, etc., all these terms - and many others - are self-sufficient. Examples using other terms are just as common: Pas de la Baisse, de la Brèque, de la Colle, du Coulet, etc. or brèche de la Cochette, du Cot. There are also doubly or triply tautological examples such as Croix du Cot or Col de la Croix du Coulet! The term "croix" appears in both lists, either in its French form or in dialectal forms (creu, croce, croez, croueis, crouts, etc.), as well as in foreign language glossaries (croce, cruz, kreuz, etc.) with the meaning of col. The habit of marking passes with a cross goes back a long way in Christian countries, and the symbolism is strong and obvious. This symbolism is found in other civilisations with other markings (cairns, banners, prayer wheels, etc.). There are many crosses in the position of a geographical pass and if, here too, a geographical criterion has to be used to eliminate summits or crossings (on the plain or in the forest), the situation is no different from that mentioned above for "collet" and which also exists for pas, golet, goulet, coll, colle, fenêtre, sattel, etc. for which a decision sometimes has to be made according to their geographical position.

In my opinion, this is a heritage to be saved and a vast field of study.

If you are passionate or simply interested, I suggest you get in touch with me to exchange views and information on this subject (1).

Thank you in advance for your suggestions, proposals and criticisms.

Nota bene 1: does the term synonym apply to all the terms in the second list? If there is no ambiguity for terms that are either translations into local languages (with all the richness linked to the variability of these languages), or equivalents of a descriptive geographical type (such as breach, window, etc.). On the other hand, we may be shocked to come across terms such as "aire, baraque, croix, etc.". Here, in fact, the term synonym is probably not appropriate; it would be more a question of elided forms analogous, for example, to the following situation: we do not say "je vais à la ville de Grenoble, à la commune de Vizille ou au village de Vif", but "je vais à Grenoble, à Vizille, à Vif", we cannot say that ville, commune, village are synonyms, but rather implied denominations of the same type. It's a similar phenomenon that led to people saying (and then writing) "aire des Chiens, baraque du Cheval Mort, croix de Bor, etc." instead of "col de l'aire des Chiens, col de la baraque du Cheval Mort, col de la croix de Bor, etc." because it was customary (sometimes from time immemorial) to put a shelter or a cross at the top of these passes. This is why I support the thesis that a certain number of terms have been adopted in the list of synonyms for the word col, although the term synonym is not appropriate here.

Nota bene 2: in glossary II, the notation a+b+c corresponds to the following situations:

a = neck (or not or ...) of, of the , of, of the, etc..; b = The collar (or the step or ...), the small, the low, ...; c = Col, Brèche, Collet, ...

(1) Michel de Brébisson, 10, rue des Ayguinards, 38240 MEYLAN
[email]michel.debrebisson@libertysurf.fr[/email]