La dona de record immarcesible [The Unforgettable Woman]. References to Almeria in the work of Joan Coromines

Abstract

The «dona de record immarcescible» [‘unforgettable woman’] is the way Joan Coromines evokes the memory of his wife in a poem dated 1981, the year of her death, in his etymological dictionary of Catalan (DECat). Bárbara de Haro Rodríguez, to whom he always refers obliquely both in his Catalan etymological dictionary (DECat) and the Castilian and Hispanic one (DCECH), was from Bedar (Almeria), and is certainly the person that provided the data on this area which is reflected in his etymologies, in particular in DCECH. The possibility that the electronic edition of this dictionary (DCECH 2012) offers for conducting phrasal searches like «gente de Bédar» [‘people of Bedar’] or «montañas de Almería» [‘mountains in Almeria’] leads to numerous local references to Almeria, proof of just one of the multifarious facets of the personality of the etymologist.