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Splitting?
Trying to cover all three senses in one article is awkward. Besides, the history should include also the history of Belize and El Petén.
Consider creating a separate article for Yucatán (state), which would contain the current section "State of Yucatán" and those history sections that follow the creation of the State. The current page would retain the information on the peninsula and a summary of its history up to the Mexican Independence. Consider also moving some of the historical details to the pages on History of Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala.
Jorge Stolfi 21:00, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Name story
Re the story about the name Yucatán: It may be invented, of course, but it does not seem out of the ordinary (and it does not imply "arrogance", as the article said.) Imagine yourself in the same situation, what would you do? Pointing at the land and asking "what is this" -- or anything, for that matter -- in interrogative tone would often work, as the explorers had learned in previous voyages.
It may be that, in the local language, the Spaniard's pointing gestures and the interrogative tone had a different meaning than they had in Europe and Africa. But how would the explorers know that? Even today, most West Europeans assume that basic signals like "nodding for approval" and "nodding for disapproval" are universally obvious, and are quite surprised when they discover that in some countries their meanings are switched.
When Pedro Álvares Cabral first sighted the coast of Brazil, they loaded all their interpreters -- who spoke a dozen European, Asian, and African languages -- into a boat and, from a safe distance, tried to interrogate the Tupinambá natives who had assembled on the beach. The report they sent back to Portugal tells that, unfortunately, the indians did not understand a thing -- "because the sea was making too much noise".
Jorge Stolfi 22:48, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Terry Pratchett's take on this in The Light Fantastic is wonderful:
- The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called - in the local language - Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.
- The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
- -- Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic (quoted without permission, but I suppose Terry won't mind provided you buy the book) -- B.d.mills 06:03, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) (PS: If this quote shouldn't be here due to copyright issues then please delete it)