Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present

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describing the term from the secondary source perspective, such as Peter Martyr, seem
to combine the term with both primary sources’ phonology. What makes me disagree
with Arron’s interpretation is, that symbolically speaking, the Carib term for island is
cai or kaya which is phonetically closer to the original Amazonian term ioc+ai
described above to refer to little mountains of dirt under which we find the root called
yuca. Moreover, the Taino trigonoliths all look like a mountain or the way an island is
perceived from the ocean. This lets me to believe that there is a very strong connection
between all these ocean migratory groups and the ioca as common symbol of origin.
This is said, because the second part of the deity’s name Yúcahu Bagua Maórocoti
is translated as bagua > ‘ocean’, as if an iocai —dirt mountain in an ocean.
However, after establishing this term as a central Taino word based on its
etymology and primary source context, our continuation of BDC’s text gives us one of
the first primary sources that places yuca, a Taino Pre-Columbian term and primary
food source, in the context and practive of Nahuatl agriculture. Also, this paragraph of
BDC’s text illustrates how the peninsula of Yucatan was named from the corruption of
the Nahuatl itzotl > ‘yucca’ into “tlati” and from the lexicalization of the Spanish
accompanying BDC, who joined both terms into Yucatlati, later becoming Yucatan. Even
Diaz del Castillo at the end of the paragraph makes the observation that “the name
Yucatan did not exist in the mainland language, but that the name stuck” 143 .
Number of mentions of the word yucca in The True History of the Conquest
of New Spain including the cross reference of the three manuscripts: 13
143
(Diaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana| Aparato de Variantes, 1632)