We have some people from Lausanne in Switzerland staying with us and I was just explaining to one how to get to tonights open air theatre.
It is, I told them, in Domaine d’Asties which is on Le Pech just across the valley from our house.
The word pech completely dumbfounded my Swiss friends , who were of course native French speakers and I remembered that it was a dialect word from around here.
A Pech I explained was a colline or little hill.
It always seemed a totally reasonable word to me as it must be related to Pic which means a mountain in the Pyrenees (see Pic Du Jer near Lourdes) and also Piquer in French which means to sting (as in my favourite white wine Picpoul which is meant to sting my lips ) and then also, in English, to peak , as in a peaked hat or the top of a mountain. It also reminds me , probably without reason of the Kerry word for mountain, the Reek and then the Scots and Irish Ben or Pin.
They all seem to me to be related in some way and I feel sure have a common Celtic origin.
Comments
martine
on July 28, 2011Pech vient de Puy, qui à son tour dérive du latin Podium. Voici quelques précisions :
Puy est un terme franco-provençal ou nord-occitan (vivaro-alpin) dérivé du bas-latin podium, qui signifie « emplacement surélevé » ou « petite éminence ». Ce mot latin est resté en français avec son sens originel en architecture, dans la mode, le sport et le spectacle.
Podium a aussi donné différents toponymes occitans : poët (Le Poët, Le Poët-Laval, Le Poët-Sigillat…), puèi , puech, puèg, pioch ou puòg (Collet du Puèi, Le Puech, Pech-Montat, Puech de Montgrand, Pueg Gerjant), pié (Piégut, Piégut-Pluviers). En catalan, il a donné puig (Puig de Campcardos, Puigmal, Puigcerda, El Puig), en navarro-aragonais, pueyo (Pueyo, Pueyo de Jaca, Pueyo de Santa Cruz), etc.
So it seems that there is no celtic origin in this particular case, but who knows?
isabel healy
on July 29, 2011…and Pic du Jer Park near Ballinlough…could that be called a colline?
Martin
on July 29, 2011Thanks Martine, I am informed.
Isabel , no , it being masculine it is called a garsoon.
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