![]() ![]() (They say the derivation "has no foundation whatsoever.") Granted, some take this to be a folk etymology, perhaps a corruption of a Tupi or Guarani word for "wave." The conjecture that it originally came from a native word amassona meaning "boat destroyer" is given by various old sources, but this was disputed as early as 1857 by Daniel P. But the Anglo-Saxon name Eoferwic was evidently a folk etymology of sorts, reinterpreting the earlier toponym Eboracum, a Latinization of Celtic Eborakon, said to mean "place of yew trees." So should the "true" name of (New) York relate to boars or yews?Īmazon is given as "The Boat Destroyer," although it's usually said that Francisco de Orellana named the river for the mythical Greek tribe of Amazons after a 1541 battle with local female warriors (or perhaps male warriors whom Orellana mistook to be female). "New York" is given as "New Wild Boar Village." That's based on the idea that York in England derives from Old English eofor "wild boar" + Latin vicus village. Some of the etymological glosses given in The Atlas of True Names are misleading in other ways. Kangaroo is another one, as discussed by Cecil Adams in his column " The Straight Dope." After discovering the parallels between the supposed derivations of kangaroo, Yucatán, and Nome, Adams writes: "Having now had the 'I don't know' yarn turn up in three different parts of the globe, I can draw one of two conclusions: either explorers are incredible saps, or somebody's been pulling our leg." The Nome = "I don't know" and Yucatán = "I don't understand you" stories are replicated by other popular etymologies that tell of miscommunications between European explorers and indigenous people. (The Nome Convention and Visitor Bureau accepts this derivation.) Wikipedians suggest that Nome could actually have been named after a similar Scandinavian toponym, but I don't know how plausible that is. A 1901 letter by George Davidson (recently noted here by Jon Weinberg) provides another popular theory, that the map notation ? Name was misread as C. Similarly, the story that the name of the Alaskan town of Nome comes from a phrase meaning "I don't know" ( ki-no-me) goes back to 1905 at least. Even Hormes and Peust give another possibility: Nahuatl yuhcatlan "abandoned place" (see discussion in this report by David & Alejandra Bolles, who throw a few more potential origins on the fire). There are plenty of competing theories, such as Bishop Diego de Landa's story that it's a Hispanicized version of Ci uthan, meaning "they say it." Or perhaps it's from Nahuatl Yokatlan "place of riches" (disputed here), or from a word meaning "massacre" (from yuka "to kill" and yeta "many" - so says Adrian Room's Place Names of the World). The Wikipedia page on the conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba ( Spanish, English) traces it back to Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia's Historia de los indios de la Nueva España ( History of the Indians of New Spain, c. For instance, there's the old story about Yucatán meaning "I don't understand (you)," which goes back to early Spanish sources. Some of the popular etymologies are quite persistent. Through the maps, we wanted to show what they saw."įrom a brief examination of the "true" names given on the maps, it appears that the cartographers have accepted a good number of disputed derivations and folk etymologies. "The names give you an insight into what the people saw when they first looked at a place, almost with the eyes of children. "We wanted to let the Earth tells its own story," Stephan Hormes told Der Spiegel. Tolkien's maps of Middle Earth, which include names like "Dead Marshes" and "Mount Doom." So they've filled their world maps with similarly descriptive toponyms. The cartographers, Stephan Hormes and his wife Silke Peust, say they were inspired by J.R.R. It's a very clever idea, but in execution it enshrines some questionable notions of "truth." As reported by Der Spiegel and picked up by the New York Times blog The Lede, two German cartographers have created The Atlas of True Names, which substitutes place names around the world with glosses based on their etymological roots. ![]()
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