The Spanish we already know (Part 3).

If you live in California, New Mexico or Texas, you’ll be familiar with a whole load of place names which have Spanish origins, for example:

• San Antonio
• San Francisco
• San Jose

The Spanish were the first Europeans to have a presence in the Americas and they were a pretty religious group. As a result, many, many towns were named after saints:

• San Antonio -> Saint Anthony
• San Francisco -> Saint Francis
• San José -> Saint John

But they could be more inventive when they put their minds to it!

• Los Ángeles – The angels
• Puerto Rico – Rich Port
• Buenos Aires – Good air(s)
• Costa Rica – Rich Coast
• Colorado – Colourful
• Fresno – Ash tree
• Santa Cruz – Holy cross
• Santa Fe – Holy faith
• El Paso – The pass
• San Luis Obispo – Saint Luis Bishop*
• Modesto – Modest
• Santa Rosa – Saint Rose

*Obispo = bishop

Let’s have a look at some simple phrases which use this vocabulary:

• Siempre miro Los ángeles de Charlie on television.
  I always watch Charlies’ Angels on television.
• Vamos a la costa cada fin de semana.
  We go to the coast every weekend.
• La sopa es muy rica.
  The soup is very good.
• Es una de las regiones más ricas de España.
  It’s one of the richest regions in Spain.
• Ella no tiene fe en Dios.
  She doesn’t have faith in God.

In the United States, over time some of these Spanish names have been anglicised

Montaña -> Montana

Montaña = Mountains

Spanish place names

If you are from the UK, you might be familiar with these place names from Spain itself:

• Costa del sol – The sunny coast
• Costa Dorada – The golden coast

Example phrases:

• El sol es muy fuerte hoy.
  The sun is very strong today.
• El sol se pone en el oeste.
  The sun sets in the west.

Football / Soccer

The names of some football teams are also a source of basic Spanish words:

• Real – Royal
• Sociedad – Society
• Atlético – Athletic

For example:

• Visitamos el palacio real en Madrid.
  We visited the royal palace in Madrid.
• Él tiene un cuerpo muy atlético.
  He has an athletic body.

Names of famous Spaniards

• Penelope Cruz -> Penelope Cross
• Antonio Banderas – Anthony Flags
• Guillermo del toro – William of the bull

Just to make things clear:

• Cruz – Cross*
• Bandera – Flag

*The object not the emotion!

And talking of Antonio Banderas, one of his most famous films is ‘Zorro’:

• Zorro = fox

In the first article in this series we looked at the similarity between English nouns which end in ‘TION’ and Spanish nouns ending in ‘CIÓN’. This included such incredibly common words such as ‘nación‘ and ‘estación‘.  We also covered the related adjectives, like ‘nacional‘, ‘internacional‘ and ‘emocional‘.

Check out class 1 here.