The Power of Names: Place–Making and People–Making in the Riojan Wine Region

Abstract

Based on longitudinal ethnographic research in the Riojan wine region of northern Spain, this article describes how naming has been used over the past two and a half decades to distinguish people in the wine region. An ecological zone long associated with its most famous product, the wine region straddles three of the country's seventeen autonomous communities, regional political units established since Spain's 1978 democratization. Leaders of the Basque and non-Basque autonomous communities whose territories include portions of the wine zone employ nation-building strategies, including the strategic use of names for place, wine and people, in promoting distinctive cultural identities for their communities. The case illustrates the impacts of competing regional power holders, national and supranational policies, and the global economy on the use of naming in constructing and contesting cultural identities; and calls attention to interrelationships of placenames and product names in shaping ideas and debates about affiliations and name-use rights.