Words and Stuff Johnny Grimond

Guinea, Guiana, Guyana: are you puzzled by these republics with similar names?

It’s the news from Guyana that makes me ask. This small South American country has not had much luck over the years. Its history has been dominated by sugar and slavery. Recently, however, vast quantities of oil have been found.

The economy will have grown by 51 per cent this year, says the IMF, making it the zippiest in the world. Rejoicing all round might have been expected, but no: the discovery has led to violent squabbling.

The Indo-guyanese, most of whose forebears came as indentured labourers from North India, are pitted against the Afro-guyanese, who are descendants of slaves from West Africa. The indigenous people, a relatively small group known as Amerindians, look on in despair.

Guyana’s troubles are a typical consequence of European colonialism. This slice of South America used to be British Guiana. It’s part of a region known as the Guianas, which includes Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana, an overseas department of France.

Please don’t confuse any of these with West Africa’s Guineas. They include plain Guinea, a former French colony, and Guinea-bissau, once Portuguese, and Equatorial Guinea, bagged by the Spanish (oil has made it Africa’s Guyana).

And please don’t confuse these Guineas with the island of New Guinea, half of which is a part of Indonesia and the rest a part of Papua New Guinea, a country lying north of Australia.

How did seven countries in three continents get these G-names? Guiana seems to have been first. Sir Walter Raleigh published The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana in 1596 – so the word must have had some currency then. It surely arose from Guayana, the Spanish version of Guiana, supposedly meaning ‘land of many waters’ in an Amerindian language.

Some of the African slaves sent to the Guianas no doubt came from the region around the Gulf of Guinea, but that’s not where the name Guiana came from. That is first recorded in 1598, and is of unknown origin, though it may be a corruption of a Berber name for the ‘land of the blacks’, which the Portuguese then borrowed.

About 65 years later, ‘guinea’ entered the English language as the name for a coin made of gold that had often originated in Guinea. At first, it was worth £1 and used only by the Royal Adventurers of England Trading with Africa. However, it became so popular that it was made legal tender in 1717 at the fixed rate of 21 shillings, having varied in value before then.

Some guinea coins bore the image of an elephant, and some had a castle too – though the common pub name Elephant and Castle seems to be unconnected.

Guinea has also given its name to several plants and creatures, from guinea plum to guinea fowl, but not even Rudyard Kipling has told us how the guinea pig got its name. A native of South America, it seems to have no clear association with Guinea or even the Guianas.

The link to Papua New Guinea is clearer. New Guinea was given its name by a Spanish explorer who thought the indigenous people looked like the Africans of the Guinea coast.

And what of the Indians? How do two such different peoples as the IndoGuyanese and the Amerindians come to share a name?

The answer goes back to Christopher Columbus who, when passing by in 1492, mistook Cuba for Vietnam or, more broadly, thought he was in Asia and had found the spice islands east of India known as the Indies.

When his mistake became clear, these Atlantic isles were given the name West Indies, and the indigenous peoples of North and South America were called Indians, or Amerindians.

What’s in a name? A hell of a lot, in the case of India, the Guineas and Guyana.