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A TALE OF TWO TULES: BIOGEOGRAPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF CALIFORNIA’S SPANISH PLACE NAMES
Abstract:
<p>Geographical place names provide insights into a region’s cultural and environmental history. Animal and plant names are particularly instructive as they reveal early cultural perceptions of salient environmental features, many of which have changed over time or no longer exist. This talk examines the significance of California names on the land provided by Spanish explorers and clergy. Fully one-third of California place names are of Spanish origin, the lion’s share named for Catholic Saints or other religious symbols. But many place names were derived from specific encounters with plants and animals, even insects. And because Spanish visitors and settlers hailed from a similar Mediterranean climate, most of their botanical place names were assigned from plant genera that were common to Iberia and California. The most enigmatic of these introduced botanical place names were tule (referring to wetland plants, especially bulrush, <i>Schoenoplectus</i> sp.) and tulare (a place overgrown with tules). These are not Spanish terms, but rather Nahuatl names for wetland species learned during the Spanish occupation of Aztec Mexico. Liberally distributed over much of California, these Nahuatl loan words have become attached to creeks, rivers, lakes, canyons, and a county, not to mention tule elk, tule wrens, tule salmon, tule fog, the bacterial disease tularemia, and of course, the increasingly dated phrase—"they’re out in the tules”. I conclude with a suggestion as to why the Spanish abandoned their own name for bulrush—junco—and substituted tule and tulare from the Aztecs. </p>
Keywords: biogeography, place names, toponymy, tule, California
Authors:
Robert A Voeks, California State University, Fullerton; Submitting Author / Primary Presenter
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A TALE OF TWO TULES: BIOGEOGRAPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF CALIFORNIA’S SPANISH PLACE NAMES
Category
In-Person Paper Abstract