Hi all, this is my first visit here, so I will be on my best behavior and your answers must all be clever, concise, and perfectly accurate. :dubious:
If you research enough on the internets, you will find both the traditional meaning of ‘Alcatraz’, and an alternate. I can’t figure out the truth, and I have had some help that hit a brick wall.
Alcatraz is usually translated as ‘pelican’. As your kind fingers massage the web, you’ll also find it can mean ‘lillies’. LILLIES?! Apparently something was lost in the translation…
I went to a Spanish-English dictionary message board. They couldn’t give a definitive answer.
I work with a pretty smart guy whose native tongue is Spanish. He doesn’t know.
I searched Straightdope archives. Nada.
I live near Alcatraz Island (not on it), and have heard ‘pelican’ often enough on game shows that I accepted it.
But go to your fave search engine, enter ‘Alcatraz’ and ‘lillies’ and you’ll see enough sites that state ‘Alcatraz’ is a flower you’ll see my confusion.
So far, ‘pelican’ sites are winning, but how is it possible two distinct things can mean Alcatraz?? Lillies and pelicans for gosh sake!
Both the pelican and the calla lily are named for their shapes; al-catras, in Arabic-influenced Portuguese (and Spanish, it appears), means the bucket of a water wheel. It’s more likely to refer to pelicans in the case of our island, as I doubt that lilies have been so successful there.
This is an unhelpful answer. The question did not deserve a reply that is analagous to “google is your friend.” deg007: Welcome to the SDMB. Interesting question. Thanks.
I don’t speak Arabic, nor did I imply that I do. Spanish (and Portuguese) words that start with “al” are almost exclusively of Arabic origin because of the Moorish (Arab and Berber) invasion and 800 year occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.
Although alcatraz seems to have originally referred to pelican, in modern Spanish these are now called pelicanos. The word has been applied to various other large seabirds, but presently most commonly refers to gannets.
loose translation:
Alcatraz from al-ghattas in arabic: Marine eagle with white tail. Composed of the masculine article “al” (the) and ghattas. “Marine eagle with white tail” meaning pelican. The flower received this name for its white color and perhaps for its resemblance to the open beak of a pelican.
So yeah, in case you hadn’t figured this was about the flower but it seems to have gotten its name from the arabic name of a pelican.
From the RAE, translating more-or-less and following all their links:
alcatraz 1:
m. alcartaz. (from Spanish Arabic alqartás o alqirtás, este del ár. clás. qirtās, y este del gr. χáρτης, papyrus sheet) - the ts in Arabic have a dot underneath and the á in the greek is an alpha, for some reason they aren’t copypasting well. Means “cucurucho” which in turn is a hollow cone (think an ice cream cone or a dunce’s cap).
m. A kind of conical flower.
m. Mexico. Again, a specific kind of conical flower.
alcatraz2.
(Perhaps from Spanish Arabic. *qatrás, he who walks proudly).
m. A kind of pelican.
So, as far as the RAE knows, the origins for those two meanings are different (although, logically, both come from Arabic). They’re two different words which happen to “look” the same.
An alcatraz is not any pelican. There’s pelícanos and there’s alcatraces, they look different. Most people (at least in Spain) when they say “pelícano” mean the pink or white ones. Alcatraces are white with some black, and smaller.
I am duly impressed, shocked, amazed, and humbled by the detailed responses!
It certainly appears that some co-mingling of languages, definitions, and looseness of transcriptions is at play here.
The best I can glean, which I will now be satisfied with, is that a pelican and calla lily are often white, have a ‘bucket-type’ of opening, and that ‘alcatraz’ mixes arabic, spanish and portugese word origins.
I liken it to, say, ‘upset’, in English. ‘Upset’ was a horse that upset the competition decades ago, upsetting his rivals, and causing bettors to upset their cocktail tables, and changing the usage of a word permanently-- okay, maybe not the best analogy…
Anyway…
Thank you all. Your detailed answers certainly make me a believer, and I’m now looking for that four cents a day in my couch so I may be a subscriber.
Alcatraz is a Portuguese word for a large amount of sea birds. What we might call a flock of seagulls, pelicans, etc. the Portuguese sailors in the late 1500-1600 that frequently traveled to North America found the island ( Alcatraz ) overwhelmingly loaded with such birds. Alcatraz today is referred to a larger type of seagull not so much as a flock of seagulls. Alcatraz is also used as; any flock of birds that feeds from live or dead fish. All in all, Alcatraz is best used when there’s various flocks of fish eating birds.
It was also around the time the Portuguese named the ocean ( Pacific Ocean ) for the simple reason it was very calm ( Pacifico in Portuguese )
