#167 Columbus-oscopy

I was watching a baseball playoff game and noticed one of the player’s names was Somebody-or-other Colón. It sounded good, but then they put up one of those interesting graphics that they use on TV these days and I saw how it was spelled. C- o- l- o- n-, with one of those accent doohickeys over the second “o”.
Hmmm. That partially accounts for the pronunciation, Colón. Curious, I typed Colón into my google search field and up came a number of pages devoted to various Colóns. Most of the pages were in Spanish. Using a trick I learned when I was trying to find the meaning of an obscure French phrase, I then pressed the feature to the right of the google entry for pages that are in foreign languages that says “translate this page.” Which it did.
Interesting thing: In my earlier experience, I had gone to three online French/English dictionaries to translate an apparently obscure word and come up with nothing. I had google’s translating software do it and it came up right away. This google stuff is scary.
Anyhow, the translation for Colón is not what you might expect, like “outlet tube” or “digester” or “water extractor” or “fecal compactor.” It’s Columbus. Yep. The Spanish word for Columbus is Colón. Or as we like to pronounce it, colon.
Interesting. Forget about rewriting white patriarchal history. Forget all that stuff about Columbus not only making a mistake thinking he had reached India, but us perpetuating that nautical boneheadedry by calling the natives of this accidentally “discovered” land Indians, after the inhabitants of that country that old Colon missed by thousands of miles. We need to rethink some names here. The Columbia River for instance. It’s getting dirty enough to start calling it the Colon River. Anyone who’s ever been to Columbus, Ohio will no doubt embrace the notion of calling it Colon, Ohio. Columbia University? Well, Colon University has a certain resonance and I suppose they could specialize in bowel disorders. On the flip side, Will we go in for a Columbus-oscopy? And will it be okay to say Elvis died of an impacted Columbus? Our biggest dilemma, of course, will have to do with the October holiday that celebrates Columbus’ derring-do if not his navigating abilities. Are we now to call it Colon day? “We get the next Monday off, Mom. It’s Colon day. And we need to make a project this week about the end product of Colon’s impact on America.”
One good thing, Native Americans can now say the new world was rediscovered by Colon, and so it’s no surprise that the white man then did his dooty—all over them.
America ya gotta love it.