The Carugate name
Today, is still difficult define what means the name "Carugate".
Several interpretations were made in the centuries. For someone the
term "Carugate" would derive from the latin "carrucata" ("earth
coltivabile with two oxs") or from "carribium" ("road of wagon"),
for others would be riconducibile to a medieval "Carrugate" (agrarian
measure), for some it means "foggy lands" or "connected lands";
there is who assumes contacts with the latin "carex" ("carice", a
swampy grass) or affinities with the dialectal word "carùga"
("bug harmful to the grape" or "tool for the beating of the grain").
But the "Ca(r)ugate" like we know is documented only from 1215.
In the XI century we had "Callugate" (1045), "Calugade" (1045 and 1066),
"Calugathe" (1074).
With it, Rohlfs asserts in 1956 in his "I nomi di persona nei toponimi
dell'Italia settentrionale. Il suffisso -ate" ("The names of person in the
toponimies of northern Italy. The sufix -ate") that in "Calugate",
"Carugate" survives the name of the people of the Caluconi remembered in an
ancient registration of north Italy and mentioned also from Plinio, a
famous roman encyclopedist.
The sufix -ones have been repleaced in the time by -ates.
