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Toponymy of world passes

It's well known that the French and their Latin neighbours (the Italians, the Spanish and the Catalans) not only have terrain that is ideal for cycle tourism, but they also love to give names to a whole range of passes - road and mule passes. Is it the same in the rest of the world?

A quick glance at the map of the geographical distribution of the passes in our catalogues confirms that mountain ranges all over the world are well stocked with passes that meet the requirements of our Game rules (RDJ).

If you are curious and interested in linguistic studies, you might like to find out more about the headings / generic terms / descriptors that qualify these toponyms for inclusion in our catalogues in accordance with article 2 (evoking the notion of a pass).

The "RDJ" looks at some of the aspects of the word "collar" that have made it possible for this term to serve as a passport for our favourite activity:

• certain topographical features - without being very precise
• the idea of facilitating the passage of a mountain range - without being more precise either

The literal meaning of "collar" seems to come from the Low Latin collum - "neck" or "throat" - and we can see this characteristic shape at the top of a collar - like a sort of hourglass.

These figurative and literal meanings are not sufficient to identify all similar foreign terms without understanding the evolution of languages and their application in the field.

By studying toponyms actually used in mountainous terrain, we have come up with over 500 terms that evoke the notion of a pass and which we are certain refer to passes.

Some designate passes with a high success rate; others are more equivocal and may designate something else (such as "Pas" in French or "alto" in Spanish). So it's important to understand the range of meanings of the word and also to look carefully at what it actually refers to.

Foreign expressions are sometimes false friends:

• "Colle" in Italian probably comes from "collis", which means "hill" in Latin. In reality, the majority of 'colle' names and designations are hills, and only a minority are passes. Since summits and passes are so close together, it can be tricky to distinguish between them.
• "Col" in Italian is even worse: in NE Italy it always refers to summits; in NW Italy it sometimes refers to passes, but not very often.
• "coll" in Catalonia is also sometimes treacherous - the term has other meanings than "coll" and, for our purposes, is probably not reliable at more than 80%

Having looked at hundreds and hundreds of candidate titles, we have come to the conclusion that there are 4 main families of meanings derived from terms that can evoke the notion of pass:

1- The shape of the collar

This is the literal meaning of "collar" - a shape similar to a "neck" or "throat". The same goes for "selle" / "sattel" / "saddle" or "joch" and many others.

2- A sense of "passage

This is the secondary meaning of "col" (according to the IGN) and is often found in field applications. But this whole family of words ("pas", "pass", "passo", "paso") is rather equivocal and can refer to geographical features that have nothing to do with a pass, such as defiles, river crossings, balcony paths, climbs over high plateaux. Even well-known mountain passes are not necessarily passes. So it's imperative to take a close look at the designated terrain.

3- A sense of "openness

The idea here is that the pass "opens" access to the mountain range, and subsequently to the next valley. Here we find terms like "Abra" (in South America), "Fenêtre"/"Venester", "Brèche" (perhaps) and all the expressions "Porte"/"Gate"/"Tor"/"Vrata....". There's also the completely opposite meaning - to block access to the massif - a pass at the entrance to the mountains is a good defensive spot where you can ambush the enemy. Accounts of the wars in Afghanistan often speak of military forces trapped in narrow passes. The literal meaning of one of the main Arabic terms for a pass - "Aqabat" - is "obstacle".

4- Notions of height or lack of height

As is also well known, a pass can be both a low point (on the ridge) and a high point (seen from the valley). See for example the A memoir by Xavier Bernier in 2004.

Among the valid terms are some that indicate a low point - "baisse" - and others that indicate a high point - "alto" (ES), "hoogte" (Afrikaans) and even "Summit" in the United States. Obviously, you need to avoid any ambiguity to be sure that it is really the pass that is being referred to.

Each Club des Cent Cols pass catalogue is now accompanied by a notice explaining the languages used in the country concerned and the terms we have chosen to evoke the notion of a pass. The entries for Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom provide long, very comprehensive lists of the titles that can be found. The articles in this section of the site "Comment appeler un col en France" and "Toponymie des cols suisses" do the same for the French and Swiss catalogues respectively. The other national lists are generally shorter.

Sometimes there is practically only one term for a collar:

• Mexico - "Puerto" at 99.7%
• Russia - "Pereval" at 96.6%
• Japan - "Toge" at 92.1%

Sometimes the distribution of names depends essentially on the region: in the United States, "Gap" is predominant in the east of the country and "Pass" in the west.

France is at the high end of a single majority expression - "Col" covers 64.8% of the national catalogue despite a long list of other terms that are also acceptable.

Other countries have a much more varied distribution of different terms according to language, dialect or regional preference - Italy and Switzerland, for example.

There are some international terms that can be found in many different countries for various reasons:

• the colonial past of the powers concerned
• the fact that these languages are widely spoken as official languages or "lingua francas
• the wide distribution of maps (considered reliable) in these languages and by cartographers in these countries

In the analysis of the main terms by country, which you can find in pdf at the link towards the end of this article, we have analysed 4 terms separately: "Col" (FR) (35 occurrences), "Pass" (EN) (57 occurrences), "Gap" (EN) (18 occurrences) and "Pereval" (UK) (15 occurrences). An occurrence is a country where the term is used in place names according to the sources we have selected. For "col", for example, we find all the French-speaking mountainous countries, as well as English-speaking countries where mountaineers have used this technical mountain term.

All other terms are considered as local occurrences. We have limited the lists in this analysis to 10-15 terms per country, which in all cases cover more than 90% of pass names.

A general summary (see pdf) can therefore be used to give an overview of this theme - without having to go through all the catalogues and records. You can have fun comparing similar or different terms in regions that share a linguistic history - the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, the countries of the former Yugoslavia, the Arab countries of the Middle East....

Attached files on the site contain a summary table of more than 500 selected terms. World titles-V01.pdf and the guide to ISO language codes (some of which are not so obvious!) ISO Language Codes.pdf.

In all, 78 languages are involved. More complete information on all the languages, including those not included in our mountain pass toponymy, is available on the Wikipedia pages for ISO 639-1, 639-2, 639-3. More than 7000 languages are still spoken today, many of which have no written form or are rarely written down. Those that have survived to be found on maps or signs are very much in the minority, but along with variations in spelling and dialects, the languages that are still alive bear witness to the diversity of the history and culture of the human race!

The notion of "pass" is truly global, if not universal!

Graham Cutting 12.02.2023