August 25, 2011 4:00 PM EDT
The English word ‘hurricane’ came from the Spanish explorers who carved up the New World for themselves in the 16th and 17th centuries.
However, the Spanish word it is derived from ‘huracan’ is not of European origin.
Spaniard explorers in the Caribbean picked up the word from Taino, a language spoken by the Arawak, the indigenous people of the region.
Reportedly, ‘huracan’ was the Taino word for ‘storm.’
Strangely, when the Portuguese adopted the word, the ‘h’ was metamorphosed into an ‘f’ – hence the word ‘furacão’ in the Portuguese language.
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Also, of interest, the word ‘hurricane’ only seems to apply to tropical storms that occur in the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean. Such tempests in the Pacific are called ‘typhoons.’
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