Aymeric Picaud
French priest
Aymeric Picaud was a 12th-century French scholar, monk and pilgrim from Parthenay-le-Vieux in Poitou. He is most widely known today as being the suspected author of the Codex Calixtinus, an illuminated manuscript giving background information for pilgrims travelling the Way of St. James. In essence, he wrote one of the earliest known tourist guidebooks.
Aymeric's Basque material
Among Basque scholars, Aymeric's account of his journey to Santiago de Compostela (around the year 1140) is considered as highly important for the history of the Basque language because it contains some of the earliest Basque words and phrases.
The words and phrases he recorded are:
andrea 'lady (of the house)' (modern andrea)
Andrea Maria, glossed as 'mother of God'
aragui 'meat' (modern haragi)
araign 'fish' (modern arrain)
ardum 'wine', assumed to represent nasalised [ardũ] (modern ardo, ardũ in the Souletin dialect, from older ardano)
aucona 'dart' (modern azkona)
belaterra 'the priest' (modern beretterra 'sacristan')
echea 'the house' (modern etxea)
elicera 'to church' (modern elizara, elizera in some dialects)
ereguia 'the king' (modern erregea, erregia in some dialects)
gari 'wheat' (modern gari)
iaona 'the master' (modern jauna)
Iaona domne Iacue 'St James' (modern Jauna Done Iakue)
ogui 'bread' (modern ogi)
Urcia, glossed as 'God' by Picaud (see Urtzi)
uric 'any water' (modern urik)
References
Etxegoien, J. Orhipean, Gure Herria ezagutzen Xamar: 1996
Aymeric Picaud, Codex Calixtinus facsimile.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aymeric Picaud” as french priest. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q405594. VIAF identifies the subject as 5050208. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1140 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aymeric Picaud” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.