A friend, after some longstanding scrutiny of her map-of-the-world shower curtain, emailed to ask, basically, whence cometh all the gua/gui/guays in various country names. I'll paste in my response right ... now:
OK, here be etymologies:
For each I've started from my shelf copy of Place-Names of the World (Adrian Room, 1974), and then added bits from wikipedia etc.
Guadalquivir River (southern Spain) - From Arabic Wadi-al-kebir = 'river of great water' (Guada- is common 1st element of many Spanish names, from Arabic wadi = 'river, ravine').
Guadeloupe - named after monestary on Guadelupe R. in Spain ... same 'wadi' as above.
Guam - sighted by Magellan's men on St. John's day 1521. Present name native verison of 'Juan/John'. [currently Guáhán in chimorro, Guaján in Spanish).
Guatemala - Spanish version of Indian (probably Tuendal) uhazmala = 'mountain that gushes out water', though earlier explanation of origin had been from Aztec [nahautl?] quauhtemellan = 'land of the eagle' [spanish wikipedia has it meaning "place of many trees"]
Guyana, French Guiana (la Guyane; in French, Guyana is le Guyane), Guayana Esequiba (Venezuelan territorial ciaim) - explored in 1499 by Vespucci and Hojeda, latter naming territory after people, the Guaizas, whose own name = 'respected' (ie 'we who must be respected'). But en.wikipedia: Guyana is an Amerindian word meaning "Land of many waters". And fr.wilipedia: The term "guyane" is of indigenous origin. In the guanao language, which is spoken by the indians of the Orinoco delta, GUAI means 'name', or 'denomination', UANA is a negation. ... thus Guyane means 'that which can't be named' or 'sacred ground ' or 'the house of the supreme being' (referring to the "italien" [indian?] name for the guyana massif)
Guinea, Equitorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, New Guinea - probably from Berber aguinau = 'black (-skinned people)'. Guinea hen = fowl from Guinea. Guinea pig - 1664, native to South America and is so called either because it was first brought back to Britain aboard Guinea-men, ships that plied the triangle trade between England, Guinea, and South America; or from confusion of Guinea (q.v.) with the South American region of Guyana.
[N.B. I always found it interesting that when you jigsaw Africa and S. America back together, guinea and guiana match up!]
Nicaragua - discovered 1522 by explorer Gil Gonzalez, named territory after Indian chief who owned it. Chief's name of uncertain meaning. [es.wikipdia has the Nicarao tribe emigrating south from Teotihuacan (the classical civilization near present Mexico City). The Nicaraguan government cites unnamed etymologists to say that the name has Nahuatl [ie Aztec-lang-family] origins -- some say it can be divided ni-can-atl-hua, 'the lords of water are here' or 'place where there are great deposits of water'. Others suggest that nic-atl-nahuac' means 'here together on the water'. es.wikipedia quites that, but also suggests that the -agua is from the Spanish 'water'.
Paraguay - country after river, after native tribe, Paragua, with name derived from Indian [sic] para = 'water' en.wikipedia has this: The literal translation from Guaraní is Para=great river or sea; Gua=from or belonging to or place; Y=water or river or lake. This could lead to: * "Water or river belonging to the sea" (the Atlantic Ocean). * "Water or river that belongs to a great river" (the Paraná River). * "Water or river that comes from a sea" or "water or river from the place where the sea is" (the Pantanal wetland). The fourth version states that it could be a corruption from Pajaguay, "river of the Pajaguás", a tribe that inhabited the right bank, opposite from the Guaranís.
Uruguay - country after river, origin perhaps in Indian [sic] guay = 'tail' + uru = 'bird', referring to species of bird w/remarkable tail living in forests here. Or perhaps connected with guay = 'river', common element in South American names. both wikipedias have: The name "Uruguay" comes from Guaraní. It has many possible meanings. Some of the proposed meanings are: * "River of the uru" or "River of the country of the uru": a version attributed to Felix de Azara, which suggests that the name of the country comes from a small bird, called the urú, native to the banks of the Uruguay river (from uru, idem, gua, "place of", and y, "water")[4] * "River of colorful or 'painted' chinchillas (birds) [sic? I can't find any refernces, Spanish or English, to chinchillas that aren't the soft-furred Andean rodents, apart from a city called Chinchilla in Spain]": poetic interpretation attributed to Juan Zorrilla de San Martín. * "Rivers that have dead people of snails": an interpretation attributed to a collaborator of Félix de Azara (from arugua, "snail", and y, "water")[4] * "River of those who bring food": an anonymous version which has been popularized since the discovery of an old document written by Jesuit Lucas Marton.
I keep a 1977 London Times Atlas open on my bedroom dresser. Every morning, as part of my getting-ready ritual, I flip the page to see the next map-plate, and play a little game, scanning the map to find a city or other feature that starts with a letter of the alphabet. I jot it down in my little notebook. The next day, I turn the page and set about finding something that starts with the next letter. So on through the atlas, across the globe, and down the alphabet from A to Z and all over again. And now that little notebook's become a blog: Alphabet Geography. It's still, three days in, finding its feet as I discover what, and how much, additional info, links, and sketches to add. The goal is not to take any posting-impetus from this site, but rather to make public something I was already doing anyway, a day and a letter at a time.
I finally got all my sketches from the Man/Woman/Boy/Girl project plotted on a Google Map. They're best viewed in the Google environs, but I've also set up a separate blog, with the map and the initial sketchbook-slideshow here.
Last fall I set myself the goal to draw a quick sketch of a person from each and every of the 244 Wikipedia-sanctioned countries in the world, in alphabetical order and alternating between men, women, boys, and girls (hence the name of the project). I started with "Abkhazia Man" in October, 2006 and finished "Zimbabwe Girl" in August, 2007. The source images were found using flickr or Google searches. All the photos were drawn with a Bic ballpoint pen in a nice black notebook I had left over from my dot-com days. Here's an embedded flickr slideshow:
The next order of business, of course, will be to figure out how to present these images in map form.
Till then, some notes on the project: throughout, I was aware of the problematic notion of selecting a de facto "representative" portrait for every country—and the equally-problematic notion of pretending that I wasn't. This problem is obvious for widely multiracial countries like the USA or Malaysia (who gets to be "the" American face?), but perhaps more insidious for presumably "less-diverse" countries like Sweden or Zambia, where choices between "traditional" or "modern" faces might bear their cultural baggage more subtly. So part of my way-out was to leave it up to the search results, picking the first striking and sketchable-by-me face that came up in the returns. But even the fact that I simply tried to dismiss people who seemed to be obvious tourists in favor of those who looked to me like locals, undermines that algorithm.
Well, whatever. My goal for the project was to give myself the chance to explore and rejoice in the variety of the world's faces, and I think I achieved at least a bit of that in my compilation. As for the artwork itself: it is nearly universally safe to assume that my sketches don't do the source images, let alone the people behind them, justice. Usually I was pleased if my portraits looked like a plausible person, if not the one I was trying to draw.
In general I think the younger women and girls bore the worst of my artistic lapses: an ill-plotted jawline on a guy could usually be turned into a five-o'clock shadow, but finer features proved less forgiving of my misdrawn lines. And I don't think I came near depicting the wonderful variety of my subjects' skin tones (dulled though they were by photography). Often as not, folks I was trying to draw darker just got scruffier.
The project has certainly been much more of an exercise than a finished artwork—hence the occasional experiments with widely varying techniques of line and shade. I'd hoped, from A to Z, that I'd get better and better at drawing ballpoint portraits. In the end, though, I think I mainly got faster.
Victoria Falls/Mosi-oa-Tunya, Zambia/Zimbabwe, southern Africa
Nothing inspires, and inspires rivalry, like a good big thundering waterfall. A few months back, inspired by travelling friends, I began researching a catarract I knew about but had never visited, Iguazu Falls in South America. What I found was that when it comes to a giant waterfall, people want to know just how giant, and speciffically whether it's gianter than any other waterfall (which is a more difficult question than you might think, given the multi-dimensionality of waterfalls: height, width, flow at a given moment—imagine if Mt. Everest's prestige point for climbers was not that it's the tallest, but by some complicated, debatable formula the biggest. Oh the arguments we'd have!).
In the comparisons I found, Niagra Falls usually gets brought in the picture, especially in the older articles and guidebooks, but that's usually for the quick dismissal of a known quantity. The real showdown, of course, is invariably with Iguazu's African analogue, the probably-more-famous Victoria Falls. Depending on your point of view, Iguazu is "The Victoria Falls of South America"; and Victoria's the "African Iguazu".
(Back in my days editing travel guides such comparisons alternately amused and annoyed. Any city with canals becomes "The Venice of Wherever". The problem with such comparisons is that you're kind of implying the inferiority of the lesser-known part of the equation. "It ain't Venice, but it's the best we've got!")
And indeed, I was amused and annoyed at the waterfall-showdowns. But then I went looking for old maps and discovered something fascinating and (apparently) forgotten.
The Library of Congress's American Memory site proved, as ever, a great good treasure trove. (though difficult to link from ... I've moved some map images over to the blog; to find out more you can, of course, pop over search by the map name or keyword).
All right, first, let's get oriented with this 1998 CIA map. The Falls aren't labelled, but they're right next to the Triple Frontier between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, where the Rio Iguazú flows due west into the Rio Paraná:
South America (1998)
Things were proceeding much as expected ... the falls were unlabeled, or marked with the name of the Brazilian border town, Foz do Iguaçu. But then I clicked onward to an 1873 map, from an atlas published by Charles Black and Co., Edinburgh, Scotland, and saw, where the Rio Iguazú flows into the mighty Paraná, an unfamiliar—or rather, too familiar—name:
Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay & Guayana. (1873)
Instead of Salto del Iguazú, it was labelled Salto Victoria—literally, Victoria Falls! Was this some kind of Rule Britannia-style joke by the Scottish geographers? Some kind of continental clerical blunder? Or a cruel brief renaming of the falls in honor of Brazil and Argentina's then-recent evisceration of Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance?
Over the next few days I dug up more info on the surprising references to Iguazu Falls as Salto Victoria. I did find one other old map (Brazilian, 1908) with it labelled as Salto Victoria. All the others either just marked it as "salto" or didn't show anything beyond the intersection of the Iguazú and Paraná rivers.
Mappa geral da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brasil (1908)
Paraguariæ Provinciæ soc. jesu cum adiacentibg. novissima descriptio ... (1732)
Having gotten through the maps, I started in on text searches—all but the first are from the ever-expanding 19th century universe that is Google Books. Thus, I guess, the 19th century all caps headlines. Anyway.
A BRIEF, LONG HISTORY — A VICTORIA BUT NO FALLS
Here's a story of the Falls' naming from an Argentinian tour operator:
A tourist venue par excellence, it was first glimpsed in the year 1542, when Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to Asunción in Paraguay. The conquistador, amazed at the sight of the falls, christened them as "Saint Mary's Falls", a name which over time was replaced by its primitive Guaraní name: "Iguazu" (I: water; Guazú: great), i.e. "great waters". Iguazu. At that time the region was inhabited by natives of the Mbyá-Guaraní tribe, who, around 1609, began to live within the evangelizing influence of the Jesuit fathers, who set up an experiment unique to Latin America: the establishment of a system of "reductions", that at its height included 30 towns scattered throughout the regions of the Tapé and the Guayrá (currently the south of Brazil and Paraguay), all the Argentine province of Misiones, and part of the north of Corrientes.
Political and economic differences with the throne of Spain led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from the region in 1768. The zone of the waterfalls passed into oblivion from then on until August 1901, when the explorer Jordan Hummell organized the first tourist excursion to the area. One of those travelers was Victoria Aguirre, who, when this excursion had to turn back for lack of proper roads, donated a large sum of money to open a land-route between Puerto Iguazu and the waterfalls. This date marks the beginning of tourist trips to Iguazu, and has been claimed by the community as its foundation day, in homage to Victoria Aguirre, who then became a kind of protector, a driving force for the growth of tourism and of the population.
———
THE CONQUISTADOR CABEZA DE VACA DISCOVERS THE FALLS —BUT DOESN'T MENTION WHAT (IF ANYTHING) HE CALLED THEM
"The current of the Yguazú was so strong that the canoes were carried furiously down the river, for near this spot there is a considerable fall, and the noise made by the water leaping down some height rocks into a chasm may be heard a great distance off, and the spray rises two spears high and more above the fall. It was necessary, therefore, to take the canoes out of the water and carry them by hand past the cataract for half a league with great labor. Having left that bad passage behind, they launched their canoes and continued their voyage down to the confluence of this river with the Paraná."
Also, this French chronology mentions Cabeza de Vaca's discovery of the falls "later called victoria". And an 1892 New York Geographical Survey account mentions a "magnificent but little-known cataract called 'Salto Victoria' or the 'Hundred Cataracts'. These falls occur on the Iguazú River, a branch of the Paraná, about twenty miles from its mouth." After describing the trouble one must take to get upriver to view the falls, we get the usual extreme traveller's payoff:
The numerous tributary streams pouring over these cliffs, together with the principal cataracts form such a bewildering mass of falls, that one is utterly overwhelmed with the sublimity of the scene; and probably for combined beauty and grandeur of scenery, for wildness and variety of aspect, the "Hundred Cataracts" stand unsurpassed.
———
BUT NOW: PROOF THAT BRITISH AND BRAZILIAN REFERENCES TO THE SOUTH AMERICAN FALLS AS "VICTORIA" PREDATE LIVINGSTONE'S ARRIVAL AT THE AFRICAN FALLS
"The Rio Iguassú, or Curitiba, runs east and west for about 300 miles: it is navigable in the middle of its course, but before it reaches the Rio Paraná it forms a succession of water-falls, of which one, about 10 miles from its moth, is said to be 120 feet in perpendicular height; this fall is called Salto de Victoria. The country on both sides of the lower parts of its course is thickly clothed with high timber-trees."
"Victoria. Cachoeira do rio Iguaçu, 15 legoas pouco mais or menos, acima de sua confluencia com o rio Paraná. Entre a cachoeira Cayacanga d'este rio, e nas terras e matas adjacentes vivem diversas nações d'Indios que estão ainda por se civilizar."
"Victoria. Waterfall of the river Iguaçu, 15 leagues, more or less, above its confluence with the river Paraná. The Cayacanga waterfall of this river enters[?], and in adjacent lands and bushes diverse nations of Indians live that are still uncivilized."
Later in the same dictionary entry came this bit of comparison:
Nostros presenciábamos seguramente un espectáculo de primer órden, que sobrepasa a las decantadas maravillas de los Saltos de Niágara, Nyanja y otros, y estamos seguros que llamará la atencion de todo el mundo civilizado.
We are thus surely witness a spectacle of the first order, which surpasses the marvels of the Falls of Niagra, Nyanja, and others, and we are sure that they will seize the attention of all the civilized world.
I've had trouble figuring out whether Nyanja refers to the African Victoria Falls (that would make the most sense, given the comparison). Nyanja is one of the main languages of Zambia and the region around the Falls, and seems to be a more general term for lake, and one specificly applied to Lake Nyasa/Malawi, which is quite a bit further east. Livingstone records the pre-colonial name of Victoria Falls (and today the official title) Mosi-Oa-Tunya, which means "the smoke that thunders" in the Kololo/Lozi language. Other local languages give the falls names with that same meaning, e.g. Shingu wa mutitima (Bakota/Tokalaya) and aManza Thunqayo (Matabele).
———
AND NOW, SUMMING UP
What I found most surprising about this episode was not that there was a little-known former name for a famous geographical feature, but that it seemed to be so widely known 100 years ago, and yet no contemporary sources (at least web-searchable—that's a big caveat) seemed to mention the fascinating fact that the bigness debate between Victoria Falls and Iguazú Falls is, in fact, a case of even closer parallels. Surely there are historians of Latin America out there who know about Salto Victoria, Saint Mary's Falls, the Hundred Cataracts, and the Falls or Foz or Salto or Corrientes of the mighty Iguazú, Yguassu, Iguaçu.
At the end of the day, I think comparisons between waterfalls and cities with canals and so forth are fine and useful, as far as they go. I think having, and learning, multiple names for things is wonderful. The more the merrier. It's always fun trying to figure out the "original" name of some great site, but also to realize that quite often there's no one traceable original (just as, so often, there's no one traceable "discoverer", especially once you set the big-name explorers in their proper place).
