page 3 of 3

The Spanish River in Ontario recalls a pioneering Spaniard who married a local First Nations lady and homesteaded on the river’s banks. Nearby Espanola is an Englishing of L’Espagnol ‘the Spaniard,’ the way local francophones referred to the same pioneer.

Almonte (AL-MONT) in Ontario is a beautiful little town named after Juan Nepomuceno Almonte (1804-1869), Mexican military leader and for a time Mexico’s ambassador to Washington. Almonte was president of Mexico briefly in 1862. The Ontario town had several names before local citizens suggested honouring Juan Almonte who at the time was renowned in Mexico and Canada as a Mexican citizen who had stood up to the bullyboy United States and tried to insure that Mexican sovereignty was respected, all this at a time of boisterous American jingoism and expansive notions among Americans that they should control the entire North American continent. Sound familiar?

Two other Spanish names that add a splash of salsa picante to Canadian mappery are:

Oro Grande Gulch in the Yukon (ore grande means ‘big gold find’)

and

Alhambra, Alberta is a small town just north of the David Thompson Highway west of Red Deer. The place was named after the Alhambra, an ornate Moorish palace in Granada that took more than 100 years to complete. The name is Spanish but ultimately derives from the Arabic adjective ahmar ‘red,’ one of whose forms is hamra. Alhambra has the implied extended meaning of ‘the red place or house or castle.’ But when you read the dozens of encyclopedia entries that state sternly that Alhambra means ‘the red palace’ in Arabic, remember: that is incorrect. No Arabic word for palace or castle or citadel is there. Just one adjectival form of the triliteral Arabic root h-m-r ‘red.’ As you can see from the photograph, as anyone who has traveled in Spain, Morocco, or the Middle East knows, most pale buildings are reddish or pink at sunset when the red spectrum of sunlight predominates. That’s why it’s the “red place.” It is large; it dominates its site; it glows red when the sun is going down.

A Moorish poetic explanation claims the construction of the Alhambra involved night work “by the light of torches” whose reflections on the walls lent a fiery crimson hue to the great palace. A pleasant notion but probably utter Moorish piffle.

Go to page 1

or page 2

of Spanish place names in Canada.

HOME