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My explorations of Argentina began with how the Spanish-speaking South American country came to be called Argentina in the first place. Based on my limited Latin, the name didn’t make any sense.
To be certain, the naming of Argentina is an enigma. It’s derived from the Latin word for silver and first came to be used by Italian explorers, most likely from Venice or Genoa. After a complicated linguistic battle the now Spanish rulers settled on the Italianized version of Argentina. Strangely enough, the country has no particular silver lodes. In fact, the whole concept of Argentina and the La Plata region (plata is the Spanish word for silver) is based on a myth. Way back in the early 1500s, Spanish (or perhaps Portuguese, his origins appear to be a little fuzzy) explorer Juan Diaz de Solis embarked on an expedition to survey South America. He got as far as what is now the Rio de la Plata before being attacked and killed, and possibly eaten, by the local indigenous Indians. The sun had set on de Solis.
Some of the survivors of the expedition opted to stay on as castaways while de Solis’s brother-in-law took the remaining ships and crew back to Spain. It was these castaways that supposedly first heard about a mountain of silver ruled over by a local indigenous king. Led by Aleixo Garcia, a follow up expedition searched for this apparently well concealed silver mountain, making his way across South America as far as the Andean high plains in northern Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. Unfortunately for Garcia, he died in yet another run-in with indigenous peoples as he made his way back through present day Paraguay. Survivors did manage to cart out enough precious metals, though not necessarily all silver, to convince well-healed profiteers back home that what is now Argentina was the mother lode of silver. None was ever found, but after toying with the name in various official documents, the formal name become the “Argentine Republic” by presidential decree in 1860, which remains its official name today. Of course, in common practice the shortened feminine form of Argentina was more popular and the name is how most of the world, including Argentinians, refer to the nation.
And then there was Evita.
David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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Hot White Snow 
Very interesting. Having grown up in California, a likewise Spanish-named place, I understood that the source of the place-name had been lost to history. However, it was speculated that it was from the Spanish/Catalan “calcis fornax”, referring to a lime-kiln (an inhospitably barren and hot place). If you’ve ever been along the Baja California peninsula in Mexico, it makes perfect sense.
However, reading up on this just now, it seems there’s another far more romantic explanation for a source of the name from that of a fictional place described in a Spanish text. Please excuse my lifting the words, translated from Spanish, from the Wikipedia article… but it’s pretty cool!
“Know that on the right hand from the Indies exists an island called California very close to a side of the Earthly Paradise; and it was populated by black women, without any man existing there, because they lived in the way of the Amazons. They had beautiful and robust bodies, and were brave and very strong. Their island was the strongest of the World, with its steep cliffs and rocky shores. Their weapons were golden and so were the harnesses of the wild beasts that they were accustomed to taming so that they could be ridden, because there was no other metal in the island than gold.”
–Las Sergas de Esplandián, (novela de caballería)
by García Ordóñez de Montalvo.
Published in Seville in 1510.
😀
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I hadn’t known about the origins of the name California. Now I’m wondering about the etymology of other locations.
I do like the Wiki fictional piece. Sounds much more romantic than “the place of lime kilns.”
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May I direct you to my post https://hbsuefred.wordpress.com/tag/places-of-my-life/page/2/ about the many facets of my home state, including another possible explanation for the origin of its name?
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Thanks for the additional insights.
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Many more things I’d like to know.
But I got interested in the Greek words for silver and how those are related. In Latinised form Argyros and Asimi. My Greek scholarship is nil, except for reading translations. but Plata I can understand.
As I think I have mentioned to Ether before, naming things is a great creative pleasure. Some folks name all kinds of things. I kind of reserve names for places and living things.
It is consuming to try to understand language. The place names in the US are an amalgam of many idioms.
This is the place that I will probably always consider a formative location for me.
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I’ve always enjoyed languages too, though my inability to focus always limited my learning of them. Perhaps being a scientist and learning a lot of Greek and Latin roots that make up scientific words has helped me appreciate the bridges between languages, something I took advantage of during my time in Europe where every couple of hours you’re in a different country. You’re certainly right about the US being an amalgam. We have names copied from European origins, both English and non-English (though we often re-interpret their pronunciation), but also many place names taken from various Native American tribes and languages (though again, with pronunciations reinterpreted or mistaken).
Anyway, now I’m curious as to the origins of other places I’ve visited, or plan to visit.
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I’m sure there are many regional names that derive from native cultures. The big language group in the southeast is Muscogee (Creek) from which every river or stream or town along a river gets the suffix “hatchee” or some variant of that.
Many of the place names in the UK sounded as though someone were trying to play a joke on someone..very Pythonesque sometimes.
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I could use a little Pythonesque these days. Interesting to hear that the “hatchee” comes from Creek, though even more so that Creek is really Muscogee.
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