The interpretation of the name is most often given as "Bad trip" or "Bad detour"; this would be fair enough if the name came from the French language. Tour being the same in English, a trip or circuit, and "mal" being the French word for "bad" which derives from the Latin word "malum". It is believed that this interpretation arose in the 19th century when the early tourists in the mountains where getting lost and hence it was living up to its name, "bad trip".

However the name derives from the Gascon language and not French. 100 years ago 80 – 90% of the population of Hautes Pyrenees spoke Gascon and not French, it was only after the First World War that French became the dominant language although it had been the official language of government administration since the revolution. The clue is in the name with the use of "du" rather than "de", examples being Col du Tourmalet, Col du Soulor, Col du Spandelles and further east in the Pyrenees where Gascon was not spoken, Col de Peyresourde, Col de Mente, col de Ares, etc, and to the west names in the Basque Language.

View from the summit of Col du Tourmalet. "The Long Mountain".

The Gascon language like French is a derivate of Latin and there are many similarities but it is also strongly influenced by Basque, both languages continue to be spoken in the mountains nearby, it is thought that there are 250,000 speakers of Gascon.

In Gascon the word for bad is "Mau" again from the Latin "malum", whereas "mal" is the Gascon word for mountain and we hear it in names such as Vignemale and Maladeta. The Gascon word for distance is "tur" pronounced tour and the word for "the" is "et". Therefore the name "Tour-mal-et" is " The Distance Mountain" or perhaps a better translation of the use of distance is long, so more probably "The Long Mountain". The French word for mountain pass is "col", its literal translation would be "Collar", the collar of the mountain. The full translation is then "Pass of the Distance Mountain" or "Pass of the Long Mountain", if you have cycled up it you will fully understand why!