Overview

The Alligator Is Not a Caiman When Europeans, led by Christopher Columbus, arrived on the American continent, they were astonished to encounter Indigenous peoples as well as plants and animals entirely unknown to them. In his letters, Columbus emphasized the abundance and singularity of the American environment. As Europeans attempted to name these unfamiliar species, they adopted various strategies: sometimes they used familiar Old World terms-such as ""ruiseñor"" (nightingale)"" or ""tiger""-for animals that evoked those they already knew; at other times, they incorporated Indigenous words such as manatí, tiburón, or caiman. Initially, the conquerors referred to American crocodilians as lagarto, (lizard) a term derived from the Latin lacertus. Later, the Taíno word caimán, spoken by the original inhabitants of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), gradually entered use and began to replace lagarto in historical accounts. Both terms, however, coexisted until the eighteenth century and still persist in everyday speech across many Latin American countries. The English word alligator also traces its origin to lagarto. These names and their derivatives were applied not only to the crocodiles of the Caribbean, but also to those inhabiting the Pacific coast and the Orinoco River basin. In this book, Dr. Andrés E. Seijas examines the origin and evolution of the terms caimán and alligator, exploring their meanings and the shifts in their usage within both scientific and cultural spheres. He highlights, in particular, how the word caimán ceased to be used in some countries to refer to the large crocodiles of the family Crocodylidae and came instead to denote, especially in scientific literature, the smaller species belonging to the family Alligatoridae. This shift has contributed to the erosion of the cultural values originally associated with the term. In response, the author proposes ways to recover and preserve those lost cultural meanings

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