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…
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…
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…
Guanabo, The Lowland
Guanabo is a town east of Havana, famous for its white, fine-grained sandy beach, visited by thousands of tourists and bathers every year. There are also other places in Cuba…