Bernat the Horse on the Costa Brava

If we talk horses, would any famous ones come to mind?

History knows quite a few examples, like Bucephalus (the horse of Alexander the Great), Rocinante (the horse of Don Quixote), the winged stallion Pegasus, a rare species of the Przewalski's horse, as well as the Russian mythology's own Sivka-Burka. However, do you know of any places of interest, sights or geographic locations named after any horses? Probably not.

The Catalan toponymists do not seem to have much affection towards horses — only Cavall Bernat¹ lends his name to streets, schools, cafés, colleges and even music bands across the region. So who is this workhorse and where did it come from?

The aforementioned public places are named thus due to their proximity to rocks of the same name. For example, the rock in the middle of the Platja d'Aro beach on the Costa Brava, known to locals as Cavall Bernat, served as an inspiration for the name of the nearby avenue, Avinguda del Cavall Bernat. Other Bernats can be found in Llafranc, Matadepera, and, of course, in Montserrat. Outside of Catalonia, within regions with a Catalan-speaking population (Mallorca, Valencia), there are some additional instances of mountains and hills being named Cavall Bernat.

Why, then, this specific name for all of these different rocks? All of them stand upright and elongated, but nature doesn't lack objects of such shapes. However, one immediate association is obvious — could it be explained by the thinking of the uneducated peasantry from the Middle Ages? Associating natural formations or man-made structures with penises is not the prerogative of ancient times, however, — you need only ask modern architects who have designed the Gherkin in London and Torre Agbar in Barcelona. But even then, if those rocks remind people of phalluses, what does a horse have to do with it?

One hint to the answer can be found in the resort town of L'Estartit, about a kilometre away from the shore. A thin, prong-like light-grey rock formation next to the largest, the only one to be previously inhabited, island of the Medes archipelago, is called Carall Bernat. It's not an exact name match, but the one letter difference tells us everything we need to know: the name Bernat here is given not to a horse, but to male genitalia. Every language has a range of words, slang and monikers to describe genitalia, from strictly medical to rude and obscene, and the word carall in Catalan (carajo in Spanish) is definitely the latter. Etymologists hypothesize that the second part of the name Bernat is not a name either as the history of Catalonia doesn't know any Bernats. It may simply be a part of a different word, now lost in translation.

The credit for the idea to rename Carall into Cavall goes to the Montserrat monastery abbots who without a doubt had an issue with their sacred home being associated with such indecency: "If a new, pure, name appears on maps and in books today, we will have a generation of purer minds in future, who would not refer to our sacred rock with lewd insinuations."

The plan worked out—today, the dark past of Bernat the Horse is of no concern to anyone. Even a playground in Platja d'Aro is named after him. He is now free to roam the topographic map of Catalonia, completely rid of the euphemism that was once his name.

¹⁾Cavall, from Catalan, means horse, while Bernat is a Catalan name of the German origins that means «strong as a bear».