In 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, so he named the region Veneziola.[19] The name acquired its current spelling as a result of Spanish influence,[19] where the suffix -uela is used as a diminutive term (e.g., plaza / plazuela, cazo / cazuela); thus, the terms original sense would have been that of a little Venice.[20] The German term for the area, Klein-Venedig, also means little Venice (literally small Venice). Nonetheless, although the Vespucci story remains the most popular and accepted version of the origin of the countrys name, a different reason for the name comes up in the account of Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that they found an indigenous population who called themselves the Veneciuela, which suggests that the name Venezuela may have evolved from the native word
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 11:38:40 +0000
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