11.22.08
Atlas Shirked
Rachel Maddow on Friday night (11/21/08) gave some unintended linguistic truth to her regular “Ms. Information” segment title with coverage of a project called The Atlas of True Names. Said atlas labels countries, regions and cities not with their current names but with what the names supposedly mean. Much of the atlas’s labelings are true; many of them are misinformed. For instance, Maddow swallowed whole the atlas’s claim about the origin of Yucatan:
Apparently Spanish explorers asked, “What’s the name of this region?” And the local Mayans responded by saying, “Yuk ak atan,” which means, “I don’t understand.” And so the Spanish named the place Yucatan. They named the place “I Don’t Understand”! If ever there were a more perfect summary of colonialism, I do not know of it.
Well, Rachel still does not know of it. On hearing this claim, my etymological Spidey-sense began tingling, because the tale has bullshitternet notymology written (and mapped) all over it. It sounded like a number of nonsense derivations I mock in Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
There are a number of theories of how Yucatan took its name, and Language Log, quick to the fore, discusses them and other fallacies and misinterpretations perpetrated by The Atlas of True Names. The Yuca-yarn is very much in the spirit of other canards as the kangaroo taking its name from, again, natives responding “I don’t understand” to a naming question. The logical fallacy is that such explanations imply that the one and only time explorers heard “I don’t understand” as a response was when asking one specific question. How were all the other questions answered?
I’m fascinated by one “I don’t know” etymological response that likely is kinda-sorta true, however. At Language Log, Benjamin Zimmer writes:
Similarly, the story that the name of the Alaskan town of Nome comes from a phrase meaning “I don’t know” (ki-no-me) goes back to 1905 at least. A 1901 letter by George Davidson (recently noted here by Jon Weinberg) provides another popular theory, that the map notation ? Name was misread as C. Nome (for Cape Nome). (The Nome Convention and Visitor Bureau accepts this derivation.)
Some native Alaskan likely did not say “I don’t know,” but some cartographer likely did admit he/she didn’t know by writing “? Name.” Either way, all dunnos lead to Nome.
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