L'oficialitat de les llengües en relació amb la toponímia: el cas d'A Coruña

Resum

The central theme of this paper is a study of Galician place names from the perspective of the process of language standardization. The study analyzes the problems that arose when Galician place names that had been translated into Spanish took back their original form as a result of the new political-legal framework of the last 25 years. The paper has two clearly differentiated sections. First, it offers a sociolinguistic vision of the problem, studying the origin of the place names, the phenomenon of Castilianization and its historical underpinnings, and the socio-legal consequences. In this regard, attention should be drawn to the comparative study of the various language regulations regarding place names currently in force in Euskadi, Galicia, Catalonia, and Asturias. Later, the paper discusses the conflict stemming from the place name for the city of A Coruña. In this instance, it analyzes Galician norms regarding place names and the long legal proceedings embarked upon in order to obtain the implementation of A Coruña´s official name. The controversy did not stop with the 1994 ruling by the Superior Court of Galicia in 1994, and the Supreme Court (in a ruling in 2000) and the Constitutional Tribunal (2002 court records) had to intervene, confirming A Coruña as an official place name. In this way, this paper attempts to complete and update the article published by Lois Cambeiro Cives in 1995 in this very magazine, the Revista de Llengua i Dret. In a word, the article combines a philological-linguistic perspective with a strictly legal outlook. It views its subject both from the generic standpoint of Galician toponymy and through the prism of a well known and controversial specific case.