Opening image: the Giau Pass and the Ra Gusela — long before it became one of the most photographed climbs in Europe, this was contested pasture. Photo: Marco Ober, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
We drive over the Giau, climb the Falzarego, come down from the Staulanza, cross the Duran. We say these names constantly — in weather forecasts, in Giro d’Italia stages, in messages to friends — almost never wondering what they actually mean.
Yet nearly all of them are older than the roads that now cross them. Many were already written into notarial deeds at a time when a pass was not a destination but a job: a climb to be made with livestock, a pasture to be divided, a border to be defended, a load of iron ore to be carried over to the other side of the mountain. They speak of sheep and hay meadows, of seasonal mountain dwellings and dairy huts, of crosses raised on the summit of a track, of hospices for travellers, of lawsuits that ran for two centuries, and of languages that have since changed or disappeared.
Understanding why a pass is called what it is means reading a piece of Dolomite history written in a language we no longer speak. It also means, quite often, accepting that we do not know the whole story.
This page gathers what the sources actually say about the origin of the names of the Dolomite passes, with particular attention to the Dolomiti Bellunesi and to the passes that open onto the valleys of the province of Belluno. It is built on a single rule, which matters more than any romantic suggestion: never invent an etymology. Where the explanation is documented, you will find it explained. Where it is only probable, we say so. Where it does not exist, we say that too.
A note on the local words. Ladin, Ampezzan and Cadorine forms are given in their original spelling and never translated away: their whole value lies in the fact that they preserve something the Italian form has lost. Where a form needs explaining, we explain it in English rather than replacing it.
Place names are a map of memory
Toponymy — the study of place names, of their origin, formation, distribution and meaning — sounds like a specialist’s subject. In the mountains it is something far more concrete: it is the archive of people who did not write books.
Why place names survive for centuries
Proper names change more slowly than the rest of a vocabulary, and a place name tends to hold its shape through time even when everything around it is transformed. The one condition is continuity of transmission — and in these valleys that continuity existed, because the continuity of work existed: the same pastures were used, divided and named for eight centuries by the same communities.
The result is a layering. Underneath the name printed on today’s road sign there may be, one above the other, a Latin layer, a Ladin layer, sometimes a Germanic one, and finally the Italian or Venetian layer. Each layer rewrote the one before it — and did not always understand it.
«Mont»: the word that changes the meaning of half the Dolomites
There is one misunderstanding worth clearing up straight away, because it recurs in dozens of names. In the Ladin-speaking Dolomites the word mont (or mónte, feminine) does not mean the summit: it means the high summer pasture, the alp, the dairy hut, the hay meadow up in the mountains.
The Ethnographic Museum of the Regole d’Ampezzo documents it plainly, describing the dry ewes, the fédes da grìes, spending the summer on the high pastures, «su ra mónte», and noting that «every mónte was divided into sectors, called prenşères, each equivalent to one day’s grazing». The feminine article is the giveaway: this is not the Italian masculine «il monte», it is a different word altogether.
Keeping that nuance in mind changes how many names read. When a medieval document says monte Giau or monte Mauria, it is almost never talking about a peak: it is talking about a pasture — that is, about an economic asset someone owned and someone else claimed.
Why a modern translation can hide the original meaning
Many of the names we read today in Italian are recent adaptations of far older local forms. Cimabanche coexists with the Ampezzan Sorabànces and the German Im Gemärk; the Passo di Sant’Antonio, in the Comelico valley, is really called Zovo. When the Italian form replaces the local one, the original meaning can vanish within two generations — and a new one is often invented in its place, built on nothing more than a similar sound.
The trap of resemblance
This is the most delicate point on the whole page. Linguists have a name for the phenomenon: folk etymology, the habit of connecting an obscure word to a familiar one that happens to sound like it but has no historical relationship with it. The Italian encyclopaedia Treccani states it bluntly for place names as well: interpretations based on assonance with words from one’s own or another language «often produce folk-etymological results».
Serious toponymic work, the same source warns, requires linguistic method, dialect forms collected on the ground, historical documentation, and knowledge of local geography and history. Not phonetic resemblance. That is why the phrase «not documented» appears several times on this page: it is not laziness, it is the correct way to treat the material.
It is worth remembering that Italy’s leading scholar of Alpine toponymy, Giovan Battista Pellegrini (1921–2007), professor of linguistics in Padua and a member of the Accademia della Crusca, was born in Cencenighe Agordino, in the heart of the Belluno Dolomites — and he is remembered precisely for his caution, and for warning against «the many exaggerations of the past».
How to read this page: five levels of reliability
Every entry closes with a marker telling you how far the explanation can be trusted. There are five, explained here once and once only.
🟢 Documented — supported by an authoritative, verifiable linguistic or historical source.
🟡 Likely — proposed by serious scholars and consistent with the evidence, but with a margin of uncertainty.
🟠 Hypothesis or disputed origin — an explanation circulates, but the sources are few, contradictory, or cannot be traced back to a verifiable study.
🔵 Tradition or legend — a popular story, precious as cultural heritage but not as linguistic evidence.
⚪ Still to be researched — no reliable source available: the origin of the name is not yet established.
Why these passes and not others
DolomitiBelluno.it covers the province of Belluno. Some decisive passes, however, sit exactly on the boundary, or connect the Belluno valleys with their neighbours: the Fedaia closes the upper Cordevole valley beneath the Marmolada, the Pordoi and the Campolongo open Livinallongo towards Fassa and Badia, the San Pellegrino links the Val Biois to Moena. Leaving them out would have described a geography that never existed: the people who lived here did not stop at administrative borders, they followed the pasture, the timber and the iron.
What is left out are passes with no direct link to the Belluno network. This is not a catalogue of every Alpine pass: it is a map of the names that the valleys of Belluno produced, crossed or endured.
Around Cortina and the upper Cordevole
The passes of the Ampezzo and Fodom valleys, where for centuries two worlds met: the Venetian Republic and Tyrol.
Passo Giau 2,236 m · San Vito di Cadore – Colle Santa Lucia
Jof de Giau (Fodom Ladin) · Śuogo de Jou (Ampezzan Ladin)
MeaningThe proper name is Giau / Jou. In both Ladin forms it is preceded by a generic word that already means «yoke, saddle, pass»: jof in Fodom, śuogo in Ampezzan.
Where the name comes fromThe Treccani dictionary documents the word. Under the entry giógo the etymology is Latin iŭgum, and the sixth sense reads: «Mountain pass; the term occurs in Alpine place names […] often in dialect variants (Dolomitic Ladin giou, giau)». The form giau is therefore recorded by a national dictionary as the Dolomitic Ladin variant of giogo in the sense of a pass, and as an element that enters Alpine place names. In the nearby Comelico valley the same Latin base is documented for Zovo by a study carried out with Giovan Battista Pellegrini. One inch remains uncovered: Treccani does not name this pass explicitly, as it did with staulanza. The reading «broad pasture» also circulates, but we found no source for it: the Giau genuinely is a great historic pasture, though that belongs to the history of the place, not to the origin of the word.
The story it tellsHere, by contrast, the documentation is abundant, and it records two and a half centuries of litigation. The inventory of the Grenzakten in the Tyrolean State Archive in Innsbruck preserves an arbitration ruling on the boundaries of the meadows «on monte Giau» dated 22 September 1445, an award by the Venetian-Tyrolean commission in 1582 concerning the borders «on monte Giau and Ambrizzola», disputes between Ampezzo and San Vito over woods and pastures between 1557 and 1590, two manuscript volumes from 1752 titled «San Vito against Ampezzo for monte Giau», and finally the boundary convention of 20 August 1779. The boundary stone dividing the Republic of Venice from the Austrian Empire can still be seen at the top of the pass. Long before all this, at Forcella Giau, the Istitut Ladin Micurà de Rü documents a Mesolithic site: people were climbing up here to hunt eight thousand years before Christ.
Today the Giau is above all a legendary climb: for the cycling side of the story, see our page on the Passo Giau by bike.
🟢 Documented
Passo Falzarego 2,105 m · Cortina d’Ampezzo – Livinallongo
El Fouzàrgo (Ampezzan Ladin) · Jou de Fauzare (Fodom Ladin) · Falzaregopass
MeaningThe Ampezzan name Fouzàrgo is traced back to fòuze, «sickle».
Where the name comes fromThe derivation from fòuze comes from Lorenza Russo’s study Pallidi nomi di monti, published by La Cooperativa di Cortina in 1995 (different publication details for this title are in circulation). It is the source behind every explanation in circulation, and it is a solid one. One question, however, the sources themselves do not settle: does the blade refer to mowing (which would suggest a scythe) — hay meadows and pasture — or to the shape of the terrain? Lagazuoi Expo Dolomiti, which cites Russo explicitly, keeps both readings open and leans towards the grazing explanation. Hence «likely» rather than «documented»: the underlying word is certain, its motivation is not.
The story it tellsThat life here was about pasture rather than panoramas is confirmed by the institution itself: the Regole d’Ampezzo list the Regola di Falzarego among the earliest documented, in 1237 or 1238, and record that its members joined those of Ambrizola during the fourteenth century (the official Regole pages give non-matching dates: 1318 and 1356). Eight centuries ago this pass was, first and foremost, a commons to be administered. The road came much later, in 1909, with the completion of the Great Dolomites Road; six years after that the area around the pass became no man’s land between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian lines, with the mine warfare of the Lagazuoi.
Tunnels and walkways from that period can still be visited: see our page on the Great War museums at Lagazuoi and the Marmolada.
🟡 Likely
Passo Tre Croci 1,805 m · Cortina d’Ampezzo – Misurina
Són Zuógo (Ampezzan Ladin)
MeaningThe Italian name means «three crosses». The Ampezzan name says something else entirely: Són Zuógo contains zuógo, the local word for «yoke, saddle, pass».
Where the name comes fromHere we have two names that are not translations of one another, which is telling. The Ladin form simply describes the geography: the saddle. The Italian form tells a story. According to a tradition reported consistently by several sources, in February 1789 a mother and her two children, walking from Auronzo di Cadore towards Cortina in search of work, froze to death near the pass; three wooden crosses were raised in their memory and are said to have given the pass its name. We must be honest about the level of proof: the episode reaches us only through popular sources, which agree on the date and the number of victims but name no one and cite no document. We could trace neither a parish register nor a local historical study confirming it. The chapel at the Tre Croci Pass exists and belongs to the parish of Cortina: that, and the parish records of the dead, is where the question could be settled.
The story it tellsA story of this kind, whether accurate or reshaped in the telling, still says something true: until two centuries ago, crossing a 1,800-metre pass in winter to look for work on the other side of the mountain was an ordinary thing to do, and sometimes people did not come back. The cross on a pass is in any case an Alpine constant, and it does not always commemorate a tragedy: often it simply marked the highest point of the track.
🟠 Hypothesis / to be verified against primary sources
Passo Cimabanche 1,530 m · Cortina d’Ampezzo – Dobbiaco/Toblach
Sorabànces (Ampezzan Ladin) · Im Gemärk (German)
Where the name comes fromThis is a case where we prefer to say what we do not know. None of the sources we consulted offers an etymology for Cimabanche or Sorabànces. There are interesting lexical elements, but nobody applies them to this name: in Ladin, banc denotes «any broadly horizontal ledge or step encountered along a rock face», according to Pino Videsott’s repertory of Ladin geographical terms; and the German name Im Gemärk points, lexically, to the idea of a demarcated territory, a boundary. It is striking that the Ampezzan form begins with sora («above») and the Italian one with cima («summit»): they are different elements. But translating one into the other would be our own deduction, not evidence. We should add that certain supposed early attestations circulating online, of the type Summobanchi or Summebanche, found no confirmation at all in our research: we do not repeat them as fact.
The story it tellsWhat the pass has always been, on the other hand, is very well documented: a border. The first boundary between Ampezzo and Dobbiaco was fixed in 1536, and the eighteenth-century files of the Tyrolean archive are full of border deeds involving Sesto, Dobbiaco and Ampezzo. The line between the provinces of Belluno and Bolzano still runs here, and so does the watershed between the Piave and the Adige. A little to the south lies Ospitale, with the church of San Nicolò; in the nineteenth century there was a timber transhipment yard on the pass; in 1829 the new Alemagna road arrived, and in the twentieth century, for forty years, the Dolomites Railway, with its own station at the summit.
⚪ Still to be researched
The Ladin passes: Marmolada, Sella, San Pellegrino
Three names that record three different economies: sheep, meadows and pilgrims.
Passo Fedaia 2,057 m · Rocca Pietore – Canazei
Pas de Fedaà / Jof de Fedaia (Fassa Ladin) · Fedaiapass
Meaning«Sheep pasture».
Where the name comes fromIt is one of the finest names in the Dolomites, because beneath the most imposing wall of the range it preserves the memory of the humblest of trades. The proposed derivation is from reconstructed Late Latin *fetaria, «pasture for sheep», and is attributed to Giovan Battista Pellegrini, Toponomastica italiana (Hoepli, 1990). Two necessary caveats. First: the correct form is *fetaria with an asterisk, that is, a form reconstructed by linguists and not attested in any text — not «FOETARIA», a spelling occasionally seen online but found in no source we could check. Second: we were unable to verify Pellegrini’s page in the original volume, and the attribution reaches us at second hand. The explanation is coherent, comes from a scholar of the first rank, and rests on a root still alive in Ladin and Venetian (feda, «ewe»): we call it likely, not certain.
The story it tellsThe context makes it credible: the Trentino toponymic dictionary describes the Fassa valley as a community historically «specialised» in sheep farming, to the point of holding grazing rights ab antiquo even on the marshes of the Adige, far down in the valley. The flocks came up here in summer and went down again in autumn: the pass was a stage in that movement, not a destination. The reservoir has completely changed the landscape today, but the name is still the sheep’s.
On the sporting side, it is one of the hardest climbs in the Dolomites: see Passo Fedaia by bike.
🟡 Likely
Passo Pordoi 2,239 m · Livinallongo (Arabba) – Canazei
Jouf de Pordoi (Fassa Ladin) · Jou de Pordou (Fodom Ladin) · Pordoijoch
MeaningUncertain. The sources hesitate between «meadow» and «stone».
Where the name comes fromThe Pordoi is a good example of how an elegant explanation can conceal a problem. You will read almost everywhere that Pordoi derives from pradói, «meadows»: and indeed the toponymist Giulia Mastrelli Anzilotti (Toponomastica trentina, Autonomous Province of Trento, 2003) traces the name, through metathesis, to Latin pratum. In the same line, however, she offers a second and equally probable possibility: petra, «stone». These are two incompatible etymons, and it is the authoritative source itself that leaves both open. The specific derivation from dialectal pradón that circulates online, by contrast, rests on no source we could find. The historical attestations are good and early — Phurdau in 1260 and Monte Prodoy in 1358 — but they are not enough on their own to decide between the two.
The story it tellsA detail often overlooked: the pass takes its name from the mountain, the Sass Pordoi, and not the other way round. And the 1358 form, Monte Prodoy, should be read with the caution described at the start of this page: that «monte» is in all likelihood the Ladin mont, the high pasture. The Trentino toponymic dictionary notes that the Sella and Pordoi passes were what connected the Fassa valley with Gardena and with Livinallongo: working roads, long before they were tourist roads.
🟠 Hypothesis / disputed
Passo San Pellegrino 1,918 m · Falcade – Moena
formerly la Mont de Aloch · today Pas de San Pelegrin
Meaning«The pasture of Aloch» first; then, from the name of the hospice, «Saint Pellegrino».
Where the name comes fromThis is the best-documented case on the page, and it lets us watch a name change before our eyes. Originally the pass was called la Mont de Aloch: again the mont, the high pasture. The name Aloch has very early attestations behind it: as far back as the eleventh century, in a boundary document between the prince-bishoprics of Trento and Bressanone, the forms Lucca and Luccetta appear, later evolving into Aloch and Alochet; according to Antonio Sommariva’s study the base would be Old High German lücka, «gap, opening» — a hypothesis the source itself states in the conditional.
Then comes the date that changes everything. On 14 June 1358 the Regola of Moena — a communal institution of customary law, not a modern municipality — granted Friar Gualterius, of the Order of San Pellegrino nelle Alpi, a plot known as Camp de la Rota on which to build a hospice dedicated to Saint Pellegrino for the use of travellers. From that moment the name of the hospice gradually swallowed the name of the pasture, until the pass became simply the Passo San Pellegrino. One detail is often reported wrongly: it was a Regola, and it was a grant, not a donation.
The story it tellsA hospice is not built where nobody passes. Sommariva documents that by the early thirteenth century transhumance between these mountains and the Venetian plain was «certainly established», and that the emerging timber industry added to the traffic. The San Pellegrino was a real road: shepherds, merchants, woodcutters, pilgrims. The hospice preserves a white marble holy-water stoup dated 1364; it was suppressed after the Council of Constance, revived several times, shelled and destroyed in 1915, rebuilt in the 1920s and closed in 1992.
🟢 Documented
Zoldo and Agordino: the working passes
No kings came through here. Hay came through, and iron, and nails, and livestock.
Passo Staulanza 1,773 m · Val di Zoldo – Selva di Cadore
also Forcella Staulanza · a Cadorine word
Meaning«Staying in a stavolo», and by extension the settlement itself.
Where the name comes fromThis is the soundest case of all, because nothing needs reconstructing: the word exists, it has its own entry in the Treccani dictionary, and it is the dictionary itself that connects it to the pass. The entry reads: «staulanza, feminine noun [derived from stavolo]. – A Cadorine word, properly meaning the act of staying in a stavolo», and it is «also the name of a saddle in the Dolomites (Passo Staulanza), which links the Zoldo valley with that of the Fiorentina stream». Behind it stands the stavolo, from Latin stabulum: the seasonal high-mountain dwelling, a settlement form widespread in the Cadore and a cousin of the maira and the maso. The chain is complete: stabulum → stavolo → staulanza → the name of the pass.
The story it tellsA name like this says exactly what the place was: not a saddle to be crossed in a hurry, but a place where people stayed. The stavolo is the architecture of Alpine pastoral economy: you went up in spring with the animals, you mowed, you made hay, you slept there, you came down in autumn. The staulanza was that staying. A little below the pass, between the Pelmo and the Civetta, the Malga Staulanza still stands today. Behind the name, in other words, lies the working calendar of generations of Zoldo and Cadore families.
That seasonal rhythm survives further down the valley: we wrote about it in transhumance in the Valbelluna.
🟢 Documented
Passo Duran 1,601 m · La Valle Agordina – Val di Zoldo
Duràm (Zoldo dialect)
MeaningProbably the name of a watercourse. The ultimate meaning remains unknown.
Where the name comes fromTwo independent clues converge, and each is weak on its own. The first: the Agordino tourist portal states that «the name Duran is documented from 1354 onwards, as Monte Durano, and appears to relate to the name of a watercourse or body of water» — but it cites no source for the attestation, and we found no confirmation elsewhere. The second, and more interesting: in the Zoldo toponymic repertory that declares as its basis Enzo Croatto’s Vocabolario del dialetto ladino-veneto della Val di Zoldo (2004, with an introduction by Giovan Battista Pellegrini), Duràm appears as the name of a stream. That the pass should take its name from the watercourse is therefore plausible. What root the hydronym itself comes from, however, no source says.
The story it tellsThe Duran is the direct link between the Agordino and the Zoldo valley — two valleys that for centuries lived off the same raw material: iron. The present road is recent and was built for military purposes; the pass itself, long before that, was a place of work, with its grazing mountains.
Today the climb is a cycling classic: Passo Duran by bike.
🟠 Hypothesis / disputed
Comelico and eastern Cadore: where the names were properly studied
Two passes with the rare good fortune of having been analysed by a linguist of national standing.
Passo Monte Croce di Comelico 1,636 m · Comelico Superiore – Sesto/Sexten · German: Kreuzbergpass
Cròus (Dosoledo), Crós (Casamazzagno, Candide), Crèus (Padola)
Meaning«The pasture of the cross» — not «the mountain of the cross», and not «the pass of the cross» either.
Where the name comes fromHere we have something that is missing almost everywhere else: a proper study. Piergiorgio Cesco-Frare, with linguistic and etymological contributions by Giovan Battista Pellegrini, published in the summer 1996 issue of «Le Dolomiti Bellunesi» a piece later reissued by the Val Comelico section of the Italian Alpine Club. It records an attestation from 1214 in the form Cruce, and two observations that overturn the obvious reading. First: «the morphology of the place makes clear the meaning of mónte as pasture and hay meadow and not as summit». Second: «the early attestations rule out interpreting the term in the sense of ‘pass’». As for the cross, its origin «appears reasonably clear if one recalls that a cross was usually raised on Alpine passes in earlier times».
There is also a detail linguists relish: the dialect form crèus / cròus survives only in this place name, while the ordinary word for «cross» in Comelico today is different. It is a linguistic fossil: proof that the name is far older than the language that pronounces it. On the origin of the German name Kreuzberg, by contrast, we found no scholarship: the parallel with «cross» is obvious but we cannot document it.
The story it tellsThis is a saddle that, as the scholar who studied the traces of a late Roman fort here wrote, has served «for several thousand years as both a passage and a border». Between 1915 and 1918 the front line ran across it, with the Italian attacks of 1915 and then two years of static warfare; before that the Austro-Hungarians had built the Mitterberg and Haideck forts here; and in the 1930s came the Vallo Alpino fortifications, with works driven entirely into the rock. A pasture that became a state border three times in a single century.
🟢 Documented
Passo di Sant’Antonio 1,476 m · Padola (Comelico Superiore) – Auronzo di Cadore
Zovo · Dóo (Comelico dialect)
Meaning«Yoke», that is, a mountain pass.
Where the name comes fromThe real name of this pass is not Sant’Antonio: it is Zovo. And on this point the documentation is unambiguous. The study by Cesco-Frare with Pellegrini states that «Zovo (Comelico Dóo) clearly comes from jugum in the sense of ‘mountain pass’», and sets it alongside the nearby Forcella Zovo and the Zovo di Aiàrnola. This is the same Latin base that many invoke for the Giau — with the decisive difference that here a specialist has stated it in print.
The dedication to Saint Anthony, by contrast, is a second name laid over the geographical one. We found no source documenting the church, chapel or wayside shrine it would derive from, nor explaining when and why the dedication took hold.
The story it tellsThe pass links Padola, in the Comelico, with Auronzo, in the central Cadore: note that it does not lead into the Val Visdende, which is reached instead by the Forcella Zovo, a different saddle. For the Comelico valleys it was long almost the only way south, before the valley-floor roads along the Piave took over. That such passes were contested assets is clear from a deed of 1374, when Domegge ceded to Costa «the whole mountain called Zovo di Maruola» in exchange for twenty pounds of cheese a year, ending a dispute more than a century old. Here too: monte means pasture, and the price is paid in cheese.
🟢 Documented (for Zovo) · ⚪ Still to be researched (for the dedication to Saint Anthony)
The southern gateways: the Prealps and the Sinistra Piave
Two low passes, barely seven and nine hundred metres, which for centuries decided who entered and who left the Valbelluna.
Passo San Boldo 706 m · Borgo Valbelluna (Trichiana) – Cison di Valmarino (Tovena)
also signposted Passo Sant’Ubaldo — and that is precisely the problem
MeaningIn all likelihood a saint’s name. Which saint, however, is disputed.
Where the name comes fromThe most widespread explanation — Saint Ubaldo — may well be wrong. There is an alternative thesis, attributed to the Belluno architect and historian Alberto Alpago Novello (1889–1985), according to which the name refers not to Ubaldo but to Saint Hippolytus, through the transformation Ippolitus → Poltus → Boldo.
In its favour there is a strong material clue: the little church at the top of the pass, dating from 1702, is dedicated to Saint Hippolytus, not to Saint Ubaldo. Local tradition blames the confusion on an eighteenth-century error, when the tenant of the La Muda inn is said to have had the wrong name painted on the altarpiece in 1712 — but the source that reports this uses the conditional. In 1960 the bishop of Vittorio Veneto, the future Pope John Paul I Albino Luciani, felt the need to intervene in the argument.
Against it, a methodological problem worth stating: the two sources that report the thesis are almost word-for-word identical, so one derives from the other and they count as one; and we could not trace Alpago Novello’s original publication — title, year, publisher. The thesis is attractive and materially supported, but not yet closed. The road signage, which alternates «Boldo» and «Ubaldo», is proof enough that the controversy is alive.
The story it tellsIn the Middle Ages the pass was a border with a customs post: the muda di San Boldo, where duties were levied on goods in transit. The name of the inn at the summit, La Muda, still preserves that function. In January 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Sixth Army had the road of hairpins and tunnels we know today built here in a hundred days, with some seven thousand labourers — the «Road of the Hundred Days».
🟠 Hypothesis / disputed
Passo di Praderadego 901 m · Borgo Valbelluna (Mel) – Valmareno (Follina)
no distinct dialect form documented
MeaningAccording to the current hypothesis, «the meadow of the quarrel».
Where the name comes fromThe most frequently quoted reading breaks the name down as prà de radego, from Venetian, and translates it «meadow of the dispute»: a contested spot, or a place where disagreements between neighbouring communities were settled. It is an appealing idea and consistent with what the place was for. But it needs handling with care, and it is worth explaining why.
There is only one declared primary source: Ulderico Bernardi, Abecedario dei villani. Un universo contadino veneto. We could not check the page, and the publication details in circulation differ between two separate editions. Every other occurrence online — including one on the website of an Alpine Club section — reproduces the same text word for word: it looks like three independent confirmations and is in fact one source copied three times. This is exactly the illusion this page is designed to guard against. We should add that we were unable to read the term radego in any consultable Venetian dictionary: it reaches us only through that same chain.
The story it tellsAbout the function of the place, on the other hand, a great deal can be said. The municipality of Follina describes Praderadego as an «ancient passage which even in distant times connected the Vallis Mareni with the mountainous Belluno country, rich in timber», and suggests — saying «very probable», not «certain» — that a branch of the Roman road Claudia Augusta Altinate ran through here, its original course remaining «an unsolved mystery». On the Belluno side stands the castle of Zumelle. A busy border crossing is, after all, precisely where quarrels arise: the two readings, the dispute and the road, do not exclude each other at all.
🟠 Hypothesis / disputed
The names we cannot yet explain
These seven passes deserve a full entry as much as the others. At present we cannot give them one: for none of them did we find an explanation of the name supported by a verifiable linguistic or historical source. We would rather say so, and leave the space open.
In many cases the answer exists, but only on paper: in the volumes of the Dizionario toponomastico trentino, in the Dizionario toponomastico atesino begun by Carlo Battisti (for which a young Pellegrini edited the 1948 volume on the place names of the middle and upper Cordevole), in the dialect dictionaries of the Agordino and the Zoldo valley, in the archives of the Magnifica Comunità di Cadore. That research is on our list.
Passo Valparola 2,192 m
Jù de Valparola · Intrà i Sass · Valparolapass
No source, not even Treccani, offers an etymology. Any breakdown along the lines of «val + parola» would be phonetic guesswork, and we will not make it. The history of the pass, by contrast, is precise: in 1558 Cardinal Madruzzo had a new road built here to carry iron ore from the Fursil mines above Colle Santa Lucia more quickly to the furnaces of the Badia valley. It was a trade route between Tyrol and Venice. The Tre Sassi fort, now a museum, is the next chapter.
Passo Campolongo 1,875 m
Ju de Ćiaulunch (Badia Ladin) · Jou de Ciaulonch (Fodom Ladin) · Campolongopass
Reading it as «long field» looks obvious, but no source states it for this pass, and the Ladin forms do not map neatly onto the Italian one. We prefer to record the names and stop there. The pass road was built between 1898 and 1901, linking Livinallongo del Col di Lana with Corvara in Badia.
Passo Valles 2,033 m
Dof de Valés
Searches in Treccani, in the Trentino toponymic dictionary, at the Ladin institutes and in the toponymic literature produced nothing on the origin of the name. The only solid fact is the local form. The check would have to be made in the volume of the Dizionario toponomastico trentino devoted to Primiero San Martino di Castrozza and Sagron Mis, which is not available online.
Passo Cibiana 1,530 m
also Forcella Cibiana · the village is Žubiana in Ladin
The pass takes its name from the village, and the village name is already attested in its present form in 1365, in the list of Cadore communities holding their own Laudi (customary statutes). On the etymology of Cibiana, however, we found nothing: neither the municipality, nor the Union Ladina, nor the ministerial archive records propose one. A name in -ana would typologically suggest a Roman estate name, but nobody states this for Cibiana and we will not state it either. What is very well documented is the history of the place: iron mines already active in 1420, cannonballs and then nails and keys, fifty-one workshops by the late nineteenth century, the murals since 1980 and the museum on Monte Rite.
Forcella Aurine 1,299 m
also the name of a hamlet of Gosaldo
No source offers an etymology. And it is worth dismantling the most obvious temptation at once: the connection with gold has no support whatsoever, documentary or geological. The historic mines of the area, at Vallalta, produced mercury — cinnabar, extracted from 1740 to 1963 — and even the nearby place name California arose as a metaphor for mining profits, not from any gold deposit. Aurine was an uninhabited crossing point, used for grazing and haymaking, and tied to the seasonal emigration of the chair-makers of Gosaldo.
Passo Cereda 1,361 m
Zarèda in the Primiero dialect
No etymological source found. The term does not even appear in the Primiero dialect glossaries available online. There are homonyms elsewhere in Veneto and Piedmont, but drawing conclusions from them would be a methodological error. On the pass stands the little church of Santa Rita, rebuilt in stone after a fire.
Passo della Mauria 1,295 m
no distinct dialect form documented
This is the most frustrating case: no source, not even a weak one, offers an origin for the name. We deduce nothing from resemblances to words like mauro. What is documented is the use: the municipality of Forni di Sopra records «the question of monte Mauria», the boundary dispute between Forni di Sopra and the Cadore, closed by Alessandro Brugno, captain of the Cadore, with a ruling delivered on the spot near the source of the Tagliamento on 6 June 1353, fixing the border at the Rio Stabio and the Torre stream — and reopened repeatedly all the way into the seventeenth century — once again a monte that is a contested pasture, not a summit. The pass links the Piave basin with that of the Tagliamento.
Frequently asked questions about the names of the Dolomite passes
What does Giau mean?
«Mountain pass». The Treccani dictionary, under giógo (from Latin iŭgum), records giau alongside giou as a Dolomitic Ladin variant meaning a pass, and notes that the term occurs in Alpine place names. The «broad pasture» explanation found online is not supported by any source we could trace.
Where does the name Falzarego come from?
From the Ampezzan Ladin fòuze, «sickle», according to the toponymic study by Lorenza Russo published by La Cooperativa di Cortina in 1995. Whether the reference is to haymaking or to the shape of the terrain remains undecided in the sources.
Does Falzarego really mean «false king»?
Not as an etymology. The reading falza rego = «false king», linked to the legend of the Fanes, is a popular tradition and is classified by careful sources as a folk etymology. It is a precious story, but it is not the linguistic explanation of the name.
What does Staulanza mean?
«Staying in a stavolo». It is a Cadorine word recorded in the Treccani dictionary, derived from stavolo (from Latin stabulum), the seasonal high-mountain dwelling of Alpine pastoral economy. It is the best-documented case on this page.
Why is it called Passo Tre Croci?
After three crosses said to have been raised in memory of a mother and her two children who froze to death in February 1789 while walking from Auronzo towards Cortina. The episode is reported consistently but only in popular sources, with no names and no documents: it should be treated as unverified. The Ampezzan name of the pass, Són Zuógo, contains no reference to crosses at all.
What does Fedaia mean?
Probably «sheep pasture», from reconstructed Late Latin *fetaria, in a derivation attributed to Giovan Battista Pellegrini. The root is the same as feda, «ewe», still alive in Ladin and Venetian.
Where does the name Pordoi come from?
There is no single answer. The toponymist Giulia Mastrelli Anzilotti traces it, through metathesis, to Latin pratum («meadow») or to petra («stone»): two incompatible etymons, both left open by the source. The name is attested as Phurdau in 1260 and Monte Prodoy in 1358, and the pass owes it to the mountain, the Sass Pordoi.
Why is it called Passo San Pellegrino?
Because on 14 June 1358 the Regola of Moena granted Friar Gualterius, of the Order of San Pellegrino nelle Alpi, land on which to build a hospice for travellers. The name of the hospice then replaced the older name of the pass, which was la Mont de Aloch, «the pasture of Aloch».
Who has studied the place names of the Dolomites?
The principal reference is Giovan Battista Pellegrini (1921–2007), born in Cencenighe Agordino and professor of linguistics in Padua, author among much else of Toponomastica italiana (Hoepli, 1990). Before him Dante Olivieri (1877–1964) had founded Venetian toponymy as a systematic discipline with Toponomastica veneta (Olschki, 1961). For the Dolomite area the Dizionario toponomastico atesino begun by Carlo Battisti remains fundamental.
Do you know the origin of a name we have not told yet?
This page has gaps, and we have deliberately left them visible. Mauria, Cereda, Valles, Cibiana, Aurine, Valparola, Campolongo: somewhere in these valleys there is someone who can explain these names better than anything currently online.
If you have a document, a book of local history, a parish publication, a dialect dictionary, someone’s dissertation, or simply the form your grandfather used for that pass — write and tell us. A photograph of an old map, a boundary stone or an inscription counts too.
One point, because it is the heart of the project: every contribution will be verified before it is added, and when we add it we will say where it came from. We do not publish attractive explanations without a source, not even the most beautiful ones. That is the promise that will still make this page useful in twenty years’ time.
Local scholars, teachers, dialect enthusiasts, valley residents: this is a map that can only be completed together.
The journey through the names of the Dolomites continues
What you have read is not a finished page: it is an open one. It will be updated as the research advances, as new sources arrive, and as we manage to get hold of the volumes we could not consult this time. Some of today’s empty boxes will be filled; some explanations currently given as likely may be confirmed or corrected. We promise no deadlines: we promise that every change will be argued.
The passes with a rich enough story will each get their own dedicated article in time: the Giau and its boundary stones, the «false king» of the Falzarego, the mountain barns of the Staulanza, the three crosses of 1789, the sheep of the Fedaia, the hospice of the San Pellegrino, the confusion over San Boldo. This page remains the point they start from and return to.
And the passes are only the beginning. The same question — why is it called that? — applies to the mountains (Pelmo, Civetta, Antelao, Schiara, Agner, Tofane, Marmolada), to the valleys, to the villages, to the rivers. The Piave, the Cordevole and the Boite carry names as old as, and older than, those of the passes. The Dolomites have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009 for their landscape and geology: their names are a parallel heritage, intangible and far more fragile.
If this way of looking at the Dolomites appeals to you — less postcard, more history — you will find the same approach in our guide to the Dolomites without overtourism and in our page on the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park.
Sources and further reading
We list only the sources actually consulted in building this page. Where a source is cited through another, or has not been checked against the original, we say so. Most of them are in Italian.
Dictionaries and encyclopaedias
- Treccani dictionary, entries «staulanza», «stàvolo» and «giógo»
- Treccani, «Toponimi», «Paretimologia» and «Toponomastica»
- Treccani entries for Passo di Fedaia, Pordoi, Passo della Mauria and Valparola; and the biography of Giovan Battista Pellegrini
Toponymic and historical studies consulted online
- Piergiorgio Cesco-Frare, La monte ed il monte: nomi e storie delle montagne del Comelico, with linguistic and etymological contributions by Giovan Battista Pellegrini, in «Le Dolomiti Bellunesi», Summer 1996, reissued in I Monti del Comelico, Val Comelico section of the Italian Alpine Club, June 2000 — full text online
- Antonio Sommariva, Gli «ospitalieri» di San Pellegrino de monte Aloch presso Moena, in «Studi Trentini. Storia», 90/2 (2011), pp. 427-447 — open-access PDF
- Pino Videsott, Termini geografici ladini di Marebbe (Alto Adige), Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana — PDF
- Autonomous Province of Trento, Dizionario Toponomastico Trentino, introduction to the Val di Fassa volume — PDF
- FBK – Italian-German Historical Institute, inventory of the Grenzakten of the Tiroler Landesarchiv, Innsbruck — PDF
Historic, cultural and local institutions
- Regole d’Ampezzo — origins of the institution, the Regola di Falzarego (1238), historic boundaries; and the Ethnographic Museum of the Regole, «Il pascolo» section for the use of the word mónte
- Magnifica Comunità di Cadore — history of the institution and of the undivided common property of the Cadore
- Ladin cultural institutes: Istitut Ladin Micurà de Rü, Istitut Cultural Ladin «majon di fascegn», Istitut Cultural Ladin «Cesa de Jan»
- Lagazuoi Expo Dolomiti — page on the Falzarego Pass, citing Lorenza Russo, Pallidi nomi di monti
- Municipality of Colle Santa Lucia — the Strada de la Vena and the old iron routes (Valparola, 1558); Municipality of Follina — the Claudia Augusta Altinate and the Praderadego pass; Municipality of Forni di Sopra — the monte Mauria dispute and the boundaries of 1353
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, «The Dolomites» and the Dolomites UNESCO Foundation
Works cited but not checked directly
These works underpin Dolomite toponymic scholarship and are referred to by the sources above. We could not consult them directly: we list them as bibliography, not as verification carried out.
- Giovan Battista Pellegrini, Toponomastica italiana, Hoepli, Milan 1990 (the derivation of Fedaia is attributed there to p. 219 by the source reporting it).
- Dante Olivieri, Toponomastica veneta, Leo S. Olschki, Florence 1961.
- Carlo Battisti (ed.), Dizionario toponomastico atesino, Leo S. Olschki — including I nomi locali del medio ed alto Cordevole by G. B. Pellegrini (1948) and I nomi locali della Comunità di Cortina d’Ampezzo by C. Battisti (1947).
- Lorenza Russo, Pallidi nomi di monti. Camminare nel territorio delle Regole d’Ampezzo, Regole d’Ampezzo, Cortina d’Ampezzo 1994.
- Giulia Mastrelli Anzilotti, Toponomastica trentina: i nomi delle località abitate, Autonomous Province of Trento, Trento 2003 (for Pordoi, p. 290 according to the source citing it).
- Enzo Croatto, Vocabolario del dialetto ladino-veneto della Val di Zoldo, 2004, with an introduction by G. B. Pellegrini.
- Ulderico Bernardi, Abecedario dei villani. Un universo contadino veneto (for Praderadego; the publication details in circulation differ between two editions and we could not verify them).
- Stefano Lorenzi, Atlante toponomastico d’Ampezzo, 2012, held at the Musei delle Regole d’Ampezzo.
Page last revised: August 2026. The reliability ratings reflect the state of the sources available at that date and will be updated.