In the comentario under the poem “Palabra de Mujer” in his book
Caminante John Oliver Simon notes that “Cerro Huitztepec,” a
place name in Chiapas, Mexico, “means Mountain Mountain Mountain
in Spanish, Mayan, and Nahuatl respectively.” Puts me in mind of
my British Life & Culture teacher 22 years ago in London. He
said the River Avon (Shakespeare’s brook!) essentially means
River River in English and Celtic. This is probably true of more
place names than we realize. When a people comes to a land new
to them they ask the present natives what things there are
called. If “Avon” doesn’t mean anything to you, it sounds like a
proper name, so you have to add a clarifying noun. River Avon
doesn’t mean River River to an English speaker because Avon
doesn’t mean anything to an English speaker. “Adam”, I once
read, means “Man” so any man named Adam is named redundantly.
The Dine people (Dine being what the Navajo call themselves)
translates as The People people. I think this is called semantic
opacity. Something “seman