Spanish toponyms in Islas Falkland/Malvinas

Abstract

The Falkland/Malvinas Islands are home to an English-speaking community, however the Islands have a long history of Spanish-speaking settlers, travelers and inhabitants. Its history is reflected in maps that testify to the presence of several hispanic place names. The Spanish administration, the contact with Spanish-speaking South American workers of the 19th century, and the 1982 war itself had an impact on the toponymy of the Islands. Within the Spanish place names used to refer to the Islands, there is a group that is not used in the archipelago, .i.e. the place names resulting from the Argentine claim of sovereignty over the Islands (Rodríguez, 2022a; Rodríguez and Elizaincín, 2023a). The Spanish place names that are used in situ collectively reflect the need for orientation, delimitation and management of land for livestock as well as navigation. Within the group of Hispanic names used to name the different sites of the archipelago, there are names of European origin, that is, from Spain, and others coined in Spanish but from America (Rodríguez, under review). This article proposes to account for the former, i.e. the existence of place names originating in the Spanish Empire used to refer to the Islands, thus complementing the classification system for the Hispanic toponymic inventories of the archipelago proposed by Rodríguez, 2022a. For these purposes, traditional approaches to toponymic analysis were employed. The data show that Hispanic names originating in the Spanish era do not permeate British maps but do appear on Argentine ones, demonstrating the relevance of toponymic studies for a better understanding of political conflicts, historical events, and linguistic phenomena. .