Loiu

Loiu
Municipality

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Loiu

Location of Loiu within the Basque Country

Coordinates: 43°18′53″N 2°56′20″W / 43.31472°N 2.93889°W / 43.31472; -2.93889Coordinates: 43°18′53″N 2°56′20″W / 43.31472°N 2.93889°W / 43.31472; -2.93889
Country Spain
Autonomous community Basque Country
Province Biscay
Comarca Greater Bilbao
Area
 • Total 15 km2 (6 sq mi)
Elevation 26 m (85 ft)
Population (2014)
 • Total 2,388
 • Density 160/km2 (410/sq mi)
Demonym(s) Basque: loiutarra
Time zone CET (UTC+1)
 • Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code 48180
Website Official website

Loiu (Spanish: Lujua) is a town and municipality located in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country, northern Spain.

Priests' houses in Zabaloetxe.

The new Bilbao Airport terminal has been built the municipality limits.

Geography

It is located in Asua Valley, between Derio in the east part and Erandio in the west part.

Composition

A big part of the population is dispersed around country farmhouses (called baserri or caseríos). The main neighbourhod is Zabaloetxe, where the church is located. Other urban areas are Elochelerri (in Basque Elotxelerri), in the way to Asua Valey (BI-637), next to the airport, and Lauros (Lauro).

Airport

Zabaloetxe and the airport.

After the last expansion of Bilbao Airport, many of its facilities, including the passengers' terminal are located within the municipality of Lujua.

Toponym

In Euskera, the town is called Loiu officially. In Spanish, the town is called Lujua.

The old name of this town was Luxua, but it was converted into Spanish after the phonetic evolution of x/j (around XVII century) in Lujua (the same as Xerez -> Jerez).

In Euskera, the phonetic evolution of the toponym was different, when the -a final was lost, evolve the phonema x in a different way to the Spanish language y, and the variation of the tonic syllable lu for lo. That is Luxu(a) -> Lu(x)u -> L(u)iu -> Loiu. Euskaltzaindia adopted Loiu as the formal denomination of the name. Liou adopted its official name in 1983.

See also


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.