Interesting factoid: X-box (hyphenated) comes from the ancient Mayan Xboox where “X” is the femenine article and “boox” the noun meaning black/dark, literally meaning “The dark one”.
The town got its name after a local legend that stated that a dark woman figure appeared by the town’s water well.
Source: Historia de Yucatán. Diego López de Cogolludo. 2024. ISBN 8498166403
Just to be clear, the name of the word is supposed to be read like “shbosh” or “shboash”. Native languages often use ⟨X⟩ for what English uses ⟨SH⟩, because it’s what Spanish used to do back then.
Meshico.
I like it.
Not like that!
Just like in Portuguese.
Or as in older Spanish varieties. Around 1500 or so Spanish phonology was considerably similar to the one of Portuguese, but then a bunch of changes affected the fricatives - like Spanish [ʃ] becoming [x] (from “ship” to “loch”). That likely happened to increase the distinction between [s] and [ʃ], there was a “gap” in the phonology (no back of mouth fricative) left behind by Latin [h] kicking the bucket, and Spanish filled it.
Eventually for most Portuguese speakers the same “gap” would be filled too, but with another consonant - [r] becoming stuff like [ʀ ʁ x χ h ɦ]. So the chance that Portuguese [ʃ] follows the same path is slim at best. (I say “most” because some Gaúcho, Sulista and Caipira Portuguese speakers still use the old style trill. Myself do it sometimes, but for me it alternates between [r] and [h].)
[Sorry for the info dump. I love this shit.]
Subscribe.
Awesome. I will add it to my list of places I want to visit just based on name alone. A few others include Batman, Turkey, Shitterton, England, and Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Québec.
One of my favorite geography facts, there are no fewer than three villages named “Shit” in Iran.
Coincidence? Yes.
Not a coincidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_or_Consequences,_New_Mexico
Amazing what people will do for money…
When you have no town culture whatsoever, selling it doesn’t seem that big of a deal.
Additionally, a few years ago, I have seen a post on Reddit about a town in Canada whose streets were named after Warcraft universe locations. (I have forgotten the post but it was really about this)
What about Batman in Turkey?
