DORGALI AND ITS HINTERLAND

(toponomastics and etymology)

Dorgali means ‘way, road’ < Akk. urχu ‘way, road’ + suff. -li + D- agglutinated as a case-sign preposition (de). The surname Urgu has the same etymology and the locality Urgua (Sulcis), and Dolcolce too (< *de-urχu-like) a near nuragic way still intact in Baunei land.

One among a few Dorgalian toponyms belonging to ancient Italian is Sòlogo, a corruption of isolocu ‘sirocco’ = Pisanian sirocco. But a great deal of toponyms are Semitic. Su Tirèsi is a place named by sa thirìa (the terrible Calycotome villosa) < Akk. ṭerû ‘to rub, penetrate’. Another (but false) Italian name is Nostra Sennòra de Palu Irde (literally Our Lady of Green Stake). We are certain that the ‘stake’ doesn’t keep to Our Lady but to Astarte, the goddess of universal renewal. The Christian priests succeed in superimposing Our Lady’s adoration, but the ‘stake’ memory still persists as a sacred phallus symbol. Another Our Lady sign wasn’t erased because it was the same as Our Lady: I’m talking of Isalle < Ugar. Is-hal ‘Isis’ tent’ (or Isis’ temple). Equally Ugaritic (and Aramaic) is Motu ‘Death deity’ that survives in Motorra, a place with dolmenic graves. And Mommoti too survives: it’s the famous babies scarecrow < Aram. Motu. Equally all non-embarrassing toponyms survive, too. As Istelotte ‘cornflower field’; the famous grotto Ispinigòli that in Akk. means ‘grotto’s place’. Here and there is a Latin toponym, as Tulùi < Lat. *tolutum < tabula meaning the mountain oriented with his slabs towards Cala Gonone. But already Gonone is Akkadic < gennu ‘mountain’, while cala means the short kilometric marine escarpment that links Gonone with Cala Fùili: < Akk. kālû ‘dam, barrage’.

The Shardanas had an original way to indicate precipices, voids, that collapse suddenly, and it was the same way of Akkadians. Gologone < Akk. gullu ‘bowl, basin’, Hebr. gūllā ‘goblet’. Gollei < ebr. gūllā ‘goblet’ for its silhouette. Gutturu ‘chasm’ < Akk. kuttu ‘jug, can’. Guzzurra is the ‘basins region’ < Akk. kuttu because of its numerous sources. Girove and Iriai equally < kuttu, but it indicates a ‘chasm’.

Códula indicates a container, too. It’s not from Latin cos, cotis ‘flint’ because it doesn’t have any flints. It’s < kuttu ‘jug, can’. The Babylonians, inhabiting the flat and muddy Mesopotamia, had no idea of void except for one of their jugs. The same it is for Shardanas, who had the same language. So it is for Punta Cucutthos (a 600 meter overhanging rock) which doesn’t mean any ‘cowl’ (Sardian cucutthu) but the frightening void, always expressed with kuttu ‘jug, can’, doubled according to semitic use: ku-kuttu, to give a superlative value. And Gorropu, garropu, that is a ‘concavity, natural deep excavation’, is from Bab. uruppum, aruppum ‘armpit’. Suercone, Sercone (an immense doline) is interpreted properly as ‘armpit’ (Sardian suercu < lat. suhircus), but is < Akk. serχu ‘empty, eroded soil’. Serra Orrios too is curiously an original Akkadian expression; it doesn’t show the ‘jars’ but the ‘holes, caves’ < Akk. hurru, because of the natural little wells excavated by Nuragicians in the strong basalt clay.

Sos Carros aren’t ‘the carts, wagons’ and neither is the only name of an Iron Age village (Oliena countryside). The Semites meant χarru to mean a ‘water channel’. And there are two water channels at the bottom of the village. The territory is desolate and karst (geol.), and the channels only flow when it is raining. But in ancient times, when the forests were intact, the water often flowed. The region became desert in the Roman Age. Lanaittho too indicated the presence of water, before Romans. It is explained in làcana-ittzo. Sardian làcana is ‘field, boundary’ < Ass. leqû ‘take hold of (earth)’; ittzo = Aram. ittza ‘source’. The Sùrtana valley is so named for its linear beauty similar to a glacial valley’s < Ass. ṣurtu ‘linear drawing’. Doloverre means ‘barley field’ < Lat. tăbŭla + Sardian farre ‘emmer, barley’.

Tìscali is a coronym not belonging to a nuragic village nor to its mountain but to its territory. The village, anniched in a hollow, was an authentic stronghold and was connected to Oliena by means of the Lanaittho valley, that was rapidly occupied by Romans to clear the territory along the nearby Roman way. The occupation of Oliena territory was for Shardanas (Iolaenses or Ilienses) a human catastrophe of inconceivable size. The survivors sheltered behind Supramonte rocks, pivoting on three high pasture villages: Sòvana, Duavidda, Tìscali. The Romans obviously continued to suffer Jolaenses’ attacks, that hampered an economic use of the road and of the Oliena land. Therefore the Romans, to hinder them, carried out one of most disgraceful crimes of their occupation: the systematic arson of Oliena Supramonte, in order to push the Iolaenses’ flocks three kilometers back, amongst the forests today owned by Orgòsolo. Mine is a biological and environmental reconstruction. As a matter of fact, no naturalist has never asked himself what the meaning of that desert and fascinating heatland is, with dazzling smooth white limestone, moving forward along the Roman way. It is a total desert, a biological void. The historical documents aren’t useful: the desert speaks for itself. It’s evident that later the Romans boasted of Tesca Loca, Tesca deserta et inhospita. The singular name is tescum (> It. tèschio ‘skull’). Today the adjectival Tisca-li ‘arid land’ does not concern the mentioned desert but the adjacent mountain where the nuragic village is. Maybe the mountain got the mocking name of Tiscali from the Romans to mark the miserable village inhabited by a runaway people.

Wherever the Roman way passed, the Romans installed themselves. The beautiful Oḍḍoene valley has a Latin name, perhaps a latifundista’s name, a fellow named Otho (It. Ottone, Sard. Oḍḍo). Oḍḍoene means ‘Oddo’s springs', and in this granitic valley there are several springs flowing from the dominating dolomites.

Dorgali territory was now beginning to get the new master’s mark. So happened to Monte Oḍḍéu, an equally Latin name but appearing in the Middle Age and popularised in the Spanish Age. Oḍḍéu is a corruption of Latin collegium meaning ‘livestock meeting place (to pay a tithe)’. The meeting was arranged in the mountain at Campu Donanìcoro, meaning ‘agricultural fortified compendium’ < Akk. dunnu + neχlu ‘(process of) sifting, sieving’: in this flat land there are some drainage holes.

Talking of water, how were the rivers named by Shardanas? Flumineddu has by now a Sardian name. Cedrino, instead, has a Babylonian name: kiturru means ‘toad, frog’ + īnu ‘source’ and ‘water courses’. Cedrino = ‘frog river’. The river of Còdula de Ilùne (coarsely Codula di Luna) had a phallic totem (Su Palu) in a locality where the river disappears underground: a sharp symbol of the divine sperm that penetrates in the Great Mother’s vagina. It’s not by chance that the very long channel is named Ilùne (< Ug. Ilu, the supreme God). So is named the final beach: Ilune (coarsely Cala di Luna).