Savanna: The Taino language that gave us… | etymologist.ai
savanna
/səˈvænə/·noun·1555, in Richard Eden's English translation of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera's 'Decades of the New World'·Established
Origin
From Taino zabana via Spanish sabana into sixteenth-century English, savanna began as a Caribbean flood-plain term before expanding to name the tropical grassland biomes of Africa and beyond — a Caribbean word that now most evokes the Serengeti.
Definition
A flat, open tropical or subtropical grassland with scattered trees and shrubs, typically found in regions with a pronounced dry season.
The Full Story
Taino (via Spanish)Pre-Columbian / Early Modern, c. 1500–1555well-attested
The word 'savanna' (also 'savannah') entered English from Spanish 'sabana' or 'zavana', which itself was borrowed from Taino 'zabana', the indigenous word used by the Taino people of the Caribbean — principally Hispaniola and Cuba — to denote a treeless, grassy plain. The Taino were an Arawakan-speaking people, and their term 'zabana' referred specifically to the flat, open grasslands of the Greater Antilles. The earliest Spanish attestation appears in Peter Martyr d'Anghiera's 'De Orbe Novo' (1516) and in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés's 'Historia general y natural de las Indias' (1535), where Oviedo describes 'çavanas' as extensive flat plains without trees
Did you know?
The Taino language that gave us 'savanna' was extinct within a century of European contact, yet it seeded global vocabulary with over a dozen everyday English words — including hurricane, hammock, canoe, barbecue, and tobacco. The people who spoke it were gone; the words they used for their world are still in daily use half a millenniumlater.
the earliest English occurrences, recorded as 'savana'. The semantic range broadened from the specific Caribbean grasslands to any tropical or subtropical grassy plain as European exploration expanded into Africa,
, notable as one of a handful of Taino survivals alongside 'canoe', 'hammock', 'barbecue', 'tobacco', and 'hurricane'. Key roots: zabana (Taino (Arawakan): "open, treeless grassland plain"), sabana (Spanish (borrowed from Taino): "flat plain, treeless grassland").