Pontcharra, France (No. 2)
The official name of the commune is Pontcharra, but she is colloquially nicknamed Ponch. In the past, the Pontcharra-sur-Isère shapes and Pontcharra-sur-Bréda were used, and the latter is still the name of the SNCF station. This is in order to distinguish the commune from its namesake, Pontcharra-sur-Turdine in the Lyonnais mountains, and from its Pontcharra - Saint-Forgeux railway station.
This name dates back to the Gallo-Roman period, when the villa of Pontcharra was the most important in the valley after that of Meylan. Due to its geographical location (at the northern end of the Grésivaudan valley) and the presence of the Breda torrent, Pontcharra was at the time a strategic area to reach the Savoyard valleys. The name Pontcharra comes from the combination of pons and carrum, which literally means "chariot bridge".
After the great invasions (Burgundians in particular), the place called "Pontcharra" entered a period of decadence. The place is strategic, but the environment is particularly inhospitable (swamps, invasions, etc.) and the populations prefer to settle on the hillsides (hence the multitude of hamlets). The current location of the city centre was therefore populated at the time by marginalized people (especially lepers).
The name "Pontcharra" appears for the first time in texts around the middle of the fourteenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that Pontcharra had an official existence. What was only a poor locality would indeed develop and expand thanks to trade and industry (mainly paper) to end up absorbing the neighbouring parishes of Grignon and Villard-Benoit.
