Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

In con­quest, nam­ing is a sym­bol­ic part of tak­ing pos­ses­sion. And few Caribbean is­lands to­day re­tain their orig­i­nal Amerindi­an name–Ja­maica be­ing an ex­cep­tion, Haiti an­oth­er–al­beit for the whole is­land.There are dif­fer­ent sto­ries about the name "To­ba­go." Some say To­ba­go is of Amerindi­an ori­gin. Oth­ers note it as a Span­ish word. The ar­chae­ol­o­gist Arie Boomert adds sto­ries of pre-Columbian names for To­ba­go such as Uru­paina and Alou­ba�ra too.

In the Kali'na (Carib) lan­guage spo­ken by Amerindi­ans of Trinidad, To­ba­go, and the Orinoco Val­ley, Uru­paina meant "big/large snail," while the name Alou­ba�ra comes from the Amerindi­ans of Do­mini­ca and Mar­tinique and was first record­ed by French mis­sion­ar­ies. They not­ed this was the name Amerindi­ans gave To­ba­go.

One ex­pla­na­tion of­fered for why both groups used these names for To­ba­go con­nects to an Amerindi­an myth who's cen­tral char­ac­ter is a mon­strous snake. Al­lo�eb�ra or Olou­bera, was the name some Amerindi­ans groups gave to the snake.

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