Arizona Etymology

Arizona perhaps from 17th-century Oʔodham son ‘spring’ or its diminutive al son ‘little spring’, with the Spanish addition of -a (presumably for euphony), which is documented in the spelling Tucusona (Tucson) (1752, Jacobo Sedelmayr, letter, in Naylor & Polzer, 432); or from al sonag ‘there is a little spring (in a particular place)’ (see note 1, below). With the palatalization of Oʔodham s in the last two centuries, son becomes modern shon (Rea, 277).

Anita Badertscher, Chief of Interpretation at Tumacacori National Historical Park, has helpfully brought to my attention the extensive research carried out by Donald Garate on a possible Basque etymology, aritz ona ‘the good oak’. See a discussion of the two etymologies below.

  • Son (1696, Kino, Teatro; also listed by Burrus, 45, from Kino's map), probably Oʔodham son (later shon), ‘spring’. Kino locates Son near the head of the Aquimuri branch of the Altar River—east of Saric, northeast of Tubutima [sic, for Tubutama], and southeast of Tucubabia [and its neighboring ranchería Búsanic/Búsani])—about where we would expect to find La Arizona (allowing for the inevitable inaccuracies of mapping in 17th-century Sonora), as in the adjacent Google Earth image. (Son is in the lower left of Kino’s map, Guebavi is to its northeast, and S. Xavier del Bac is near the center of the map.)

Pimeria, Kino, Teatro 1696

  • “Las minas de la Arizona” (1736, N. de Perera, cited by Garate, Arizona (Never Arizonac))

  • “las Platas, que estan embargadas en el Puesto del Arisona” (1736, Lorenzo Velasco, cited by Garate, Arizona (Never Arizonac); puesto means ‘place’)

  • “las rancherias de Gentiles manzos que ai de la Nacion llamada Papagos en la Pimeria Alta desde el Serro, o lomas en donde se hallaron las volas opulentes de Plata virgen desde aonza de peso hasta de siento, y tantas @ [sic in Garate] de plata virgen, que le llaman el Paraje de la Arisona, que desde dha loma haze un derramen [‘pours out’] a dos sexas [cejas ‘ridges’?] de dos ojos de agua, que corren de oriente a la mediania de Norte y Poniente consumiendose en las marismas de la mar” (Antonio Menezes de la Carrera, report, 28 Sep. 1742, AGN, Provincias Internas 87, f.164v-165, in Garate, Arizona (Never Arizonac); paraje means ‘place, spot’)

  • “el rio de Tubutama...nace de un ojo de agua en Arizona, pasa por el real del Agua Caliente, cuyo ojo le acrecienta[,] despues por Aquimuri, y unas tres leguas mas abajo se junta con el otro arroyo nacido en Bussani de unas ciénegas” (1764, Nentvig 1856, 502 and on frontispiece map of 1980 trans., where it is marked as a pueblo de visita; the Tubutama, the east branch of the Altar River, is now called the Aquimuri, which becomes, in its upper reaches, the Río (or Arroyo or Cañon) Planchas de Plata)

  • “De Guevavi tomaremos hácia el Sur..el camino de las Bolas [de Plata], y todo es sierra, cuyo paraje está unas diez leguas de Guevavi hácia el Sur, y de las Bolas llegamos con otras dos leguas al Agua caliente, real antiguo” (1764, Nentvig 1856, 582)

  • “Arizonac, about half a league northeast of Agua Caliente” (1764, Nentvig, trans., 100). Garate, in Arizona (Never Arizonac), asserts that the final -c was added later, perhaps by “a Spaniard far removed from any understanding of the area” or a Basque-speaker pluralizing Arizona with the addition, but the -c is, in any case, a recognizable Oʔodham suffix that would be a logical addition to shon.

  • “The Mission at Tubutama...lies eight leagues to the west and a little to the north of the Mission of Sáric. To the south lies the uninhabited land of Lower Pimería and to the north are the Papagos and the other pagan nations up to the Colorado and Gila Rivers” (1772, Antonio de los Reyes, trans., http://www.nps.gov/tuma/historyculture/san-pedro-y-san-pablo-de-tubutama.htm)

El Ejido [commune, cooperative] de La Arizona, in the far north of the Mexican state of Sonora, is a tiny community on the arroyo called Planchas de Plata, which runs through a break in what used to be called the Sierra de Arizona (including what are now called the Sierra Esmeralda, to the northwest, and the Sierra Las Avispas, to the southeast). La Arizona (lat. 31.174, long. -111.195, elev. about 3200 feet = 975 meters) is less than 20 miles (as the crow flies) southwest of Nogales. (In the 18th century, the name was also applied to the surrounding district, famous for its mining prospects.) Arizona was known for its spring: note ojo(s) de agua in the Nentvig and Menezes de la Carrera quotations above. Up the Planchas de Plata arroyo from Arizona is the mining area known as Planchas de Plata (silver slabs) (http://www.nps.gov/tuma/historyculture/arizona-planchas-de-plata.htm) or Bolas de Plata (silver balls/chunks) for the native silver found in a placer deposit there. For some miscellaneous information on the original Arizona, especially its geographical setting, see the Word document that is linked to at the bottom of this page.

As Garate says, we will probably never find an explicit statement (by the person who named Arizona) of the meaning of the name, and without such evidence we can’t be sure of its etymology.

Several things may suggest a Basque origin:

  • there were many Basques in the area in the early 18th century.

  • as Garate points out, the place name “Arizona” occurs in several other Spanish-speaking countries (and Brazil?), where it was presumably not of Oʔodham origin and might have been of Basque origin—unless it was a recent borrowing of the North American name (see note 2, below). Garate does not explicitly connect these other Arizonas with oaks or with Basques, and—most telling—he cites no instance of “Arizona” or other variant of aritz ona as a place-name in the Basque homeland itself, where oaks are common, even emblematic.

  • it is possible, as Garate asserts on the basis of the absence of the name from early Spanish records, that Arizona was not an Oʔodham settlement at the time of the discovery of silver, but Son does appear on Kino’s 1696 map, and Arizona was mentioned as an Oʔodham settlement in 1742 (see the quotation above). And, of course, a place may bear an Oʔodham name, even if it’s not an Oʔodham settlement.

I am still, however, partial to the Oʔodham etymology:

  • very persuasive to me is the appearance of Son on Kino’s map of 1696 in the location expected for La Arizona. It seems likely that the spring that was considered the source of the Aquimuri might have been called both son ‘spring’ and al son(ag) ‘(where there is) a little spring’. If Son indeed names the same place as “Arizona”, it argues strongly against a Basque origin.

  • several early sources specifically mention the ojos de agua (springs) at (or in) La Arizona. The Google Earth image of La Arizona, below, shows a roughly circular feature (approx. 100 feet across) that might be a spring-fed pond, along with a possible irrigation ditch leading to a field to the northwest. Pinau Merlin has kindly confirmed (pers. comm., June 4, 2013) that there are ponds at La Arizona. (The black and white photo below shows a pond at Rancho La Arizona.) The dense growth of trees in the arroyo indicates perennial water beneath the surface (if the trees are oaks, the water is probably within 5 feet of the surface). The Basque/Spanish prospectors presumably approached the Planchas de Plata prospects from the south, along the Altar–Aquimuri–Planchas de Plata valley, and might well have been told by the Oʔodham of a place upstream where “there is a little spring” that is a source of the Altar.

  • I have seen no early source that mentions oak trees at Arizona, which suggests that there was nothing remarkable about the oaks at that location (or that there were no oaks there).

  • there is abundant evidence of Oʔodham residence in the area in the first half of the 18th century.

  • it seems to me more likely that the place, in a region perennially short of water, would have been named for its springs than for an oak tree, in a landscape in which oaks are common.

Ejido La Arizona, 2013, Google Earth

Pond, Rancho La Arizona, 1940s, Roscoe Wilson

(http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/histphotos/id/21621/rec/47)

Notes

1. Al shonag ‘there is a little spring’ comes from al ‘little’ + shon ‘spring’ + -g (suffix added to nouns to form stative verbs, with the sense of ‘be’) (Saxton, Saxton, and Enos); cf. xonag ‘there is a spring (somewhere)’ (Mathiot). Ofelia Zepeda of the University of Arizona has kindly confirmed (pers. comm., May 2013) that al shonag is a well-formed Oʔodham phrase with the readily recognizable meaning ‘there is a little spring’. Oʔodham was the predominant native language in that area (see quotations 1742 and 1772, below). Oʔodham l commonly becomes Spanish r, and a final Oʔodham g/k sound is often dropped in Spanish (note the pairs Sonoita/-c, Tumagácori [Tumacacori/-c], Baguiburisa/-c, Busani/-c, Quijotoa/giho doʔag, Siuboidag/Siboyda; and see Huaxacac/Oaxaca).

2. In "Arizona (Never Arizonac)", Garate says,

"Arizona is, albeit uncommon, a Basque surname, but are there other places named Arizona in the New World? The answer to that question is 'yes, there are at least a dozen such places.' There is a town named Arizona in the San Luis Province of Argentina. There are six villages named Arizona in Brazil. There is a town in Costa Rica named Arizona. Guatemala has a village named Arizona, as does Honduras. Honduras also has a Río Arizona. And, Columbia has two towns named Arizona. Basques were everywhere in these countries and their presence left thousands of Basque place names. One would be hard pressed to find any indication of Pima names in any of them, however."

These instances of "Arizona" are probably all modern names, and some (perhaps all) are derived from the name of the U.S. state, often with reference to Arizona's fame in mining and ranching. There are also Arizonas in other countries, e.g., Australia, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, as well as in Louisiana, Nebraska, and Texas. (The Honduran Arizona, for instance, was originally a banana plantation named for the state of Arizona. There are people of Basque descent in North Queensland, but there are, as far as I know, no true oaks [genus Quercus] anywhere in Australia.) It's especially striking that the place-name apparently doesn't exist in the Basque Country of Spain and France.

  • Argentina (Municipio de la Provincia de San Luis): "el 5 de septiembre de 1926, dicha fecha es tomada como fundacional para Arizona." (http://www.municipios.sanluis.gov.ar/MunicipiosASP/paginas/pagina.asp?PaginaID=757&SitioId=24)

  • Honduras (Atlántida department): "Municipio de Arizona fue creado el 24 de enero de 1990... Arizona recibió su nombre como producto de las operaciones de compañías bananeras que nombraban sus campos igual que algunos estados de la Unión Americana tal es el caso de Arizona, Nevada, Dacota y Colorado. Esto sucedió en la década de los 20. Tierras bajas y planas incluyendo humedales y tierras planas inundables." (http://esfuerzounido.blogspot.com/)

  • Colombia (in Jamundí, 28 km south of Cali, in a tropical savanna climate): the Hacienda de Arizona includes farmland, thickets, and woodland, at an elevation of 950 meters, and is "a tropical habitat for Spectacled parrotlets" (Claudia Mettke-Hofmann & Udo Ganslosser, 2002, Bird Research and Breeding, 89). There is also a Ganadería Arizona (Hacienda Arizona) in Caucasia, Atioquia, Colombia (Code of Federal Regulations, Title 31, Money and Finance: Treasury, PT. 500); Caucasia has a warm tropical climate (Wikipedia). Neither Colombian location seems likely to have been named for oaks by Basque-speakers.

I've been unable to find any information on the Arizonas in Brazil, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

References

  • Burrus, Ernest J., 1965, Kino and the Cartography of New Spain, Tucson: Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society

  • Douglass, William A., 1979, "On the Naming of Arizona," Names 27/4, 217-34

  • Garate, Donald T., n.d., Arizona: A Land of Good Oak Trees, http://www.nps.gov/tuma/historyculture/upload/Arizona%20Article-2.pdf

  • Garate, Donald T., n.d., Arizona (Never Arizonac), http://www.nps.gov/tuma/historyculture/upload/Arizonac%20Article.pdf

  • Kino, Eusebio, 1696, Teatro de los trabajos apostólicos de la Compañía de Jesús en la América Septentrional (map), London: Tallis (http://econtent.unm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/NMWaters/id/3903)

  • Mathiot, Madeleine, 1973, A Dictionary of Papago Usage, 2 vols., Bloomington: Indian Univ. Press

  • Naylor, Thomas H., & Charles W. Polzer, 1986-1997, The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain, Tucson: University of Arizona Press

  • Nentvig, Juan, 1856, Descripcion geografica, natural y curiosa de la provincia de Sonora...Año de 1764, in Documentos para la historia de Mexico, ser. 3, vol. 1, Mexico City

  • Nentvig, Juan, 1863, Rudo Ensayo, Saint Augustine FL

  • Nentvig, Juan, 1980, Rudo Ensayo: A Description of Sonora and Arizona in 1764, trans. Alberto Francisco Pradeau & Robert P. Rasmussen, Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press (from the MS in the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico), history section, vol. 393)

  • Rea, Amadeo M., 2008, "Historic and Prehistoric Ethnobiology of Desert Springs", in Lawrence E. Stevens and Vicky J. Meretsky, Aridland Springs in North America, Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press, 268-78

  • Saxton, Dean, Lucille Saxton, and Susie Enos, 1983, Dictionary: Papago/Pima–English, English-Papago-Pima, Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press