Hurricane and huracan are more than words. It is a word with a story and always headline news and a hashtag on twitter. My first experience with a hurricane was growing up in Connecticut in 1954 when I learned storms have names and this one was HurricaneCarol. We lived with my grandparents in an apartment building in New Britain, Connecticut. I remember watching the rain and listening to the wind from the 2nd floor window of my grandparents flat. I remember listening to the radio until the lights and power went out. No one in my extended family had a camera, or a car for that matter. We walked everywhere or took a bus. What I remember most clearly was going outside with my father after the rain had finally stopped. I remember lots of tree branches, and trees and wires on the ground. I remember him suddenly lifting me off the ground when I got close to a fallen wire. Later, I learned from the radio how fortunate we were because no one in my family died and our home was safe. Perhaps it was then, I knew that someday, I did not want to live where hurricanes lived too. Although in my past work in advertising as a photographer, I often found myself during hurricane season in Florida or in the Caribbean. Fortunately, I was always able to get out in time, even if it was on the last plane from the island.
Moving forward to today, perhaps like many, I follow the headlines, stories and images and the twitter hashtags of trending #hurricaneian. Initially for some reason, all the words were in Spanish! By accident, my eyes were scrolling through the tweets and images on #huricanian. Well, this is how I began to wonder about the origin of these two words --- hurricane and huracan. I have known their destruction meaning for years but never their history.
Here is what I learned from both my Merrian Webster dictionary, Google and some books on my shelf about Mayan history.
The word hurricane is a Taino Native word "hurakan" with meanings of God of Storm or evil spirit of the wind. The Taino indigenous people were Arawakan speakers who migrated to the Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico before Columbus. The Mayans combined this God into one of storm, wind and fire. By the time the Spanish explorers began to occupy South America, the word became spoken and evolved in the Spanish name --- huracan --- and into our American English word as hurricane. As early as 1954, the United States decided to name the storms, initially with female names (hmm...) and then by 1978 they included male names.
BTW Hurricane Emily 2005 is still the only Category 5 Hurricane not to have the name retired. I think I have a letter to write...
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