The Name of Havana
The meaning of the name Havana (Habana in Spanish) arouses great interest and has been the subject of speculation for a long time, without a well-founded etymology proposal being achieved…
Four Names from the pre-Hispanic Mythology of the Antilles
Analyzing the etymology of the names of heroes and deities is one of the existing ways to increase our knowledge of the aboriginal mythology of the Antilles. In this work,…
Quisqueya, a Real Island
There are two aboriginal names attributed to Hispaniola: Quisqueya and Haiti. Other names such as Bohío and Babeque (or Baneque), cited by Christopher Columbus, seem to be confusions of the…
Guacayarima: the name in its labyrinth
Guacayarima is the aboriginal name for a region located in the southwest of Hispaniola that extends into what is now known as the Tiburón Peninsula (Figure 1). Peter Martyr d’Anghera,…
Guanahaní: Water Flowing Inland
Despite the wide range of opinions regarding the significance and impact of the 1492 Meeting of Cultures, there is no doubt that it was a momentous event that changed the…
Guabonito, The Big Sister
The study of the mythology of the aborigines who lived in the Greater Antilles at the time of the Spanish conquest faces significant challenges. The only direct source on the…
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…