The colour of water in late medieval Catalan landscapes

Abstract

Colour is one of the elements that the human race has had at its disposal in the characterization of landscapes right from the start, not only in the depiction of the land itself, but also rivers, lakes, pools and ponds, exploiting the shades found at the bottom of areas of water, and on banks and shores. In this paper, we analyse hydronyms, or words which include the idea of water, derived from a generic term or colour adjective, and found in the corpus of texts and legal documents from the Catalan linguistic area of the 11th and 12th centuries. We have based our study on the article published by Quetglas i Rabal in 2018, which examines the role of colour in late medieval Catalan place names, and which we have attempted to expand by offering for the first time a collection of colour terms referring to water (chromohydronyms), that is, words containing a colour element and referring to watercourses and formations of water.