The aboriginal gua in Cuban Spanish
One of the most visible manifestations of the aboriginal legacy in the culture is found in the language. In Cuban Spanish there are hundreds of words with this origin that…
Yaya and the Ancestral Mother’s Inheritance
The miscegenation with aboriginal women gave rise to the primary nucleus of Creoles who, together with other human factors, later constituted the Cuban nationality. Spanish men were the other major…
Mirror of Insult: History of the Antillean Word Sato
In the Spanish of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, the word sato is used with meanings not found in other Spanish-speaking countries, a geographical peculiarity that is a…
Clarification on the etymology of the Island Arawak word guayaba
As a result of the continuation of the study on the subject analysed in the previous entry, Guava: the living, the dead and the enigma of the fruit, it is…
Guava: the living, the dead and the enigma of the fruit
The mythology of the Arawaks of the Greater Antilles is a fascinating subject of study, full of unsolved enigmas, true challenges to the intelligence. At times, attempts to solve them…
Atabeira: the names of the goddess
The aboriginal contribution to the expressions of popular religiosity in Cuba is the least visible among the legacy of the three main roots of Cuban identity (Spanish, African and aboriginal);…
Yao, the Space of the Spirit
Toponymy is part of the aboriginal mystery that surrounds and challenges us. In the Greater Antilles millions of people live in places with names that originated long before Christopher Columbus…
The Place, the People and the Wife: the Common Key to Three Arawak Names
In this paper we will examine the etymology of three Arawak words that have the same sequence of morphemes in a segment of their structure, which shows some correlation between…
Guanabacoa, The New Site
Guanabacoa is the name of an “Indian village” founded in 1554 in the vicinity of the then village of San Cristobal de La Habana and which is currently a municipality…
Guanajay, The Upland
The locality of Guanajay in the current province of Artemisa, west of Havana, was a well-known place since the early colonial times in Cuba. In the Chapter Acts of the…