The word hurricane comes from the ancient Taino tribe of Central America, who called their god of evil Huracan. The term was adapted by Spanish colonists, whose diseases destroyed the Taino people.

So says our local paper.
Edit: Hurricanes don't reach Central America. The Taino were a major group that lived not in Central America but in the Greater Antilles: Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, etc.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

We got the word barbacue from the Taino also via Spanish.

quote:

---

_Edit:_ Hurricanes don't reach Central America.

---

I assume that's because hurricanes are formed in the heated waters of the gulfstream.

Considering the billions of dollars in losses attributed to Charley and Frances in a single month in Florida, why don't governments and insurers get together to build a floating aquathermal plant to tap into the gulfstream's heat and convert it into electricity?

I got interested and, in researching the Taino on the net, found what seems to me to be an odd conflict in the information.

On the one hand, we're told that the Taino were extinct within a very short time after 1492. (AHD). Even sources that disagree indicate that the Taino were quickly reduced to a tiny remnant.

But on the other hand, we have quite a few words from Taino. AHD lists barbecue, cassava, cay, hammock, hurricane, mangrove, potato, savanna, yuca, plus several less-familiar words. Further, our words canoe, iguana, key (as in "Florida Keys"), manatee, pirogue, tobacco, ananas (the genus of, and the French term for, pineapple) and colibri (hummingbird) are so very close to the Taino equivalents that, although AHD credits them to other Carribbean languages, one must wonder. And of course, there would be further words that went from Taino into Spanish but did not continue from there into English.

I find it very hard to believe that a people could have been exterminated (or very nearly so) so very quickly, yet in that little time contribute so many words. It seems to me that someone must have goofed.

Any thoughts?

quote:

---

I find it very hard to believe that a people could have been exterminated (or very nearly so) so very quickly, yet in that little time contribute so many words. It seems to me that someone must have goofed.

Any thoughts?

---

Sounds like their wordplay was better than their swordplay, Shufitz.

But, seriously, it is a curious case.

But it wouldn't be the first time an innovative culture was plundered for its trophies without leaving anyone behind to continue the tradition.

These are all terms for artefacts, plants, and so on that were new to the Europeans, so they would have picked up native names as soon as finding them.

This is a different pace from what would have happened if Spaniards and Taino had coexisted in the same land for some time. In another discussion here we're talking about Middle English: there, French technical terms of administration soon appeared, but ordinary words of the language (replacing existing terms in Old English) only took off a hundred years after the Conquest.