Dear List,
Amateurishly coursing thru google-sources I tried to
check if there could be any link between the word "Tobago" ( which VN
linked to tobacco, confirmed by the double irony of a real Nicot)
and "Serenity" - versus "Trinidad" and "Trinity".
Besides the effects of tobacco and hallucinogenic drugs
and curious etymological tibtis, there was no "Serenity" in sight.
Except, of course, if we consider that Vinelandar's
and Demon's death removed all the remaining obstacles for the "court-ship"
of Van and Ada.
I decided to send on the data on Tobago/Tobacco anyway because the
island and the play with the name is present in ADA.
Trinidad
and Tobago: Christopher Columbus encountered the island of Trinidad on July
31, 1498 and named it after the Holy Trinity. Columbus reported seeing
Tobago, which he named Bella Forma, but did not land on the island. The
name Tobago probably derivesfrom the tobacco grown and smoked by the
natives. "Kairi" or "Iere" (old Amerindian name for Trinidad): Usually
translated as The Land of the Hummingbird, although others have reported
that it simply meant island.
Other sources: 1. Arie
Boomert - The etymology and origin of the European as well as Amerindian
names of Tobago form the subject of this essay. The first recorded name for
Tobago may have ...
jsa.revues.org/document1856.html - 58k -
Names for Tobago: Journal de la Société des
Américanistes, 2001, 87,
The names of the islands of the Caribbean often form
the oldest recorded toponyms of these islands. A good number of them owe
their present name to Columbus who was profoundly concerned with the
choice of names for the new world he had come across, as the act of
naming symbolized taking possession. Relatively few islands have retained
their original, Amerindian, name. The name Tobago is often assumed to be
of Amerindian derivation, whereas its origin is actually Spanish. In
fact, two now obsolete, genuinely Amerindian names are known for the
island.... According to Las Casas, Columbus spotted an island... He called it
Belaforma « because from a distance it seemed beautiful » (Las Casas
1957-1961, I, p. 357 ; Morison 1963, p. 270). According to Las Casas,
Columbus sighted an island 26 leagues to the north of the Bocas, which he
named isla de la Asumpción... Besides, he spotted another one
Columbus called la Concepción ...these two names actually refer to one and
the same island, i.e. Tobago...
Numerous variants of the island's name are to
be found in the sixteenth-century Spanish sources. It is spelled as Tavaco
in 1511 and 1512 , as Tabacho , as Tabaco in 1533, ca 1545 and ca 1560, as
Tabago on Honem's map of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean dating
from ca 1540, and as Tavago in 1569. The island remained to be called
Tabaco or Tabago in Spanish throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries... The Dutch continued to use the variants Tabaco and Tabago until
well into the eighteenth century... While in the mid-seventeenth century
French sources refer to Tobago as Tabuco or Tabac , until recently the
French, like the Spanish, still spoke of Tabago rather than Tobago..
As is indicated by its sixteenth-century variants, the original name of
the island was undoubtedly Tabaco, i.e. the Spanish word for «
tobacco
». The noun tabaco has remained unvaried in Spanish throughout the
centuries ; it is comparable to derivates such as modern French
tabac and Dutch tabak.
The seventeenth-century English
alteration from Tabaco or Tabago to Tobago is reflected by the vowel
change from tabaco to tobacco in this language. The latter variant is
undoubtedly related to the Dutch noun toebak, a now obsolete form
which is synonymous to tabak. Unfortunately, the origin of the
Spanish word tabaco is often misunderstood. Tobacco (Nicotiana
rustica and N. tabacum) is an indigenous cultivar of tropical
America which the Spanish as the first Europeans only learned to know as a
result of Columbus' voyages to the West Indies. It is frequently
assumed that together with knowledge of the tobacco plant the
Spanish adopted the term tabaco as a
loanword from Taíno, the
Arawakan language of the contact-period Amerindians of the Greater
Antilles.However, according to Oviedo, the Taíno did not apply the term
tabaco to the tobacco plant, but to an Y-shaped tube which he
believed the Indians used to inhale tobacco smoke through their nostrils «
in order to go out of their senses » by putting the end of the tube «
in the smoke of the burning herb ... this tubical instrument was employed
for sniffing powdered substances with hallucinogenic properties
during ritual gatherings, rather than for inhaling fumes. ...The
Amerindians of Tobago itself and neighbouring islands had quite
different names for Tobago. Two of these
have been recorded in the
documentary sources. In the 1620s Vázquez de Espinosa noted that « Tobago
is called Urupaina in the Indian language, meaning big snail
...Consequently, it can conjecturally be suggested that, like the Spanish,
the Kalina Indians were struck by the characteristic contour of Tobago,
seen from the ocean, which reminded them of the outlines of the large
marine gastropods to be found in the Caribbean. The second name for
Tobago, to be found in the historic
literature...the name may be
related to beléuera or beréuera, i.e. the Island Carib ...This name
appears to be a compound of béle, « soft, sticky », and éuera, « tool,
penis » However, Breton (1900, p. 90) mentions the same word he
records as the Island Carib name for Tobago, in a quite different
context when stating that « la couleuvre, ou escarboucle » of
Dominica is known as alloüebéra ... monstrous snake is a mythical
animal ...The myth in question refers to a large snake or dragon that
can make itself large or small at will. Moreover, it bears a bright,
red jewel or carbuncle on its forehead which is moveable like a human
eye-lid and is exposed when the snake is drinking, illuminating the
surroundings. This bejewelled snake (boa) lives in a twin mountain inside
a deep cavern where it deposits a red excrement, killing anyone who
approaches it unless one has fasted and abstained from sexual intercourse
for at least three days.
[ Tog as soccer shoes and clothing] the earliest
quotation containing it is so indescribably wonderful: A lamb eight or
nine months old, and until his first shearing, is called a heder or sheder, hog,
hogget, or lamb-hog. In other counties a teg, tog, gimmer, and dinmont,
&c. This from the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society in 1851. Now, on
to togs "clothes". This word comes from the language spoken by
vagabonds, called Vagabond's Cant, in the 16th century. Their word
was togeman or togman, coming from French toge and Latin toga meaning
"toga". The -man ending is somewhat common in cant, for example, darkmans
meant "night" and lightmans meant "day". Anyhow, togman was
shortened to tog by the early 18th century. It originally referred
to a loose coat or other outer garment; by the late 18th century it was
being used to refer to "clothes" in general, and it was pluralized to
match the meaning: togs. Apparently in Trinidad and Tobago, togs now refers
to soccer boots. Etymologically you
www.takeourword.com/TOW166/page2
Excerpts from "ADA" mentioning Tobak and
Tobakoff:
Cordula- Van ‘...Tomorrow I have to be in London and on the third
my favorite liner, Admiral Tobakoff, will take me to Manhattan. Au revoir. Tell
him to look out for low lintels. Antlers can be very sensitive when new. Greg
Erminin tells me that Lucette is at the Alphonse Four?’
Lucette-Van: ‘I’m so
happy and sad,’ she murmured in Russian. ‘Moyo grustnoe schastie! How long will
you be in old Lute?’ Van answered he was
leaving next day for England, and then on June 3 (this was May 31) would be
taking the Admiral Tobakoff back to the States. She would sail with him, she
cried...
Van: (Tobakoff was an embittered old vessel) Van managed to
sleep soundly.. the dream image of an aquatic peacock, slowly sinking before
somersaulting like a diving grebe, near the shore of the lake bearing his name
in the ancient kingdom of Arrowroot.
Lucette-Van: ...a
steeplechase picture of ‘Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up’ above dear Cordula’s and
Tobak’s bed...she wondered how it affected the Tobaks’ love life during sea
voyages. ...To most of the
Tobakoff’s first-class passengers the afternoon of June 4, 1901, in the
Atlantic, on the meridian of Iceland and the latitude of Ardis, seemed little
conducive to open air frolics... Lucette was a hardy girl...Spring in Fialta and
a torrid May on Minataor, the famous artificial island...she evoked the Helmeted
Angel of the Yukonsk Ikon whose magic effect was...
Lucette-Van :
...you swim
faster,’‘Mezhdu prochim (by the way), is it true that a sailor in Tobakoff’s day
was not taught to swim so he wouldn’t die a nervous wreck if the ship went
down?’‘A common sailor,
perhaps,’ said Van. ‘When michman Tobakoff himself got shipwrecked off Gavaille,
he swam around comfortably for hours, frightening away sharks with snatches of
old songs and that sort of thing, until a fishing boat rescued him — one of
those miracles that require a minimum of cooperation from all concerned, I
imagine,’...Demon, she said, had
told her, last year at the funeral, that he was buying an island in the
Gavailles... They had huge
succulent ‘grugru shrimps’ (the yellow larvae of a palm weevil) and roast
bearlet à la Tobakoff. ..Procrustean
procrastination...‘Hey, look!’ he
cried, pointing to a poster. ‘They’re showing something called Don Juan’s Last
Fling. It’s prerelease and for adults only. Topical Tobakoff!’...She did
not see her whole life flash before her and ends as she swam like a dilettante
Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful
torpor.
...............