Why, in Spanish, is saint sometimes San and sometimes Santa for naming cities?

3 months ago by Quilotoa to c/asklemmy

veniasilente 104 points 3 months ago

It's because nouns in Spanish carry gender! Which is crazy but it works.

"San Francisco" → Francisco is a male name.

"Santa Bárbara" → Baŕbara is a female name.

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zaphod 52 points 3 months ago

Masculine form would be santo like in Santo Domingo. San seems to be an abbreviated form of that.

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ordnance_qf_17_pounder 77 points 3 months ago

SANTO FRANCISCO, THE EVEN GAYER SAN FRANCISCO 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️❤️

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DaMonsterKnees 21 points 3 months ago

This might be the most important comment ever. I'm honored to have been here.

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FinjaminPoach 3 points 3 months ago

Macho

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quediuspayu 38 points 3 months ago

San is the apocope of santo (masculine form of saint), all masculine names use the form San except those that start with the syllables to- or do-.

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anomnom 2 points 3 months ago

See? English isn’t the only language with semi-arbitrarily pointless rules

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veniasilente 5 points 3 months ago

Yeah, "Santo" is the better example. I'm actually not sure if there's any particular distinction for why sme place names are "San" and other are "Santo", perhaps it comes from historical baggage from whichever branches of explorers / conquerers founded each town.

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FloMo 15 points 3 months ago

To the best if my knowledge, Santo is used to clarify the difference between the title and the name.

Santo Tomás being the simplest example I can think of, as “San Tomás” can be confused as as “Santo Más”.

Everything else is pretty spot on and an excellent explanation!

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quediuspayu 10 points 3 months ago

All masculine saint names use the form San except those names that start with the syllables to- and do-.

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crank0271 20 points 3 months ago

So is there something we haven't been told about Claus / Klaus?

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veniasilente 18 points 3 months ago

My understanding is we have the Dutch to blame for that as they named him "Sante" and Spanish-speaking countries adapted the sound into "a" for whatever reason. Basically it's "whole" proper name derived from elsewhere.

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ValiantDust 9 points 3 months ago

I think it's Sinterklaas and it was English-speaking Americans who changed it into Santa Claus. Probably misunderstanding the origin.

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snooggums 2 points 3 months ago

Americans also like to mispronounced things and then write down what it sounds like using words they already know.

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betterdeadthanreddit 7 points 3 months ago

He's a world-famous forklift driver.

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flamingo_pinyata 5 points 3 months ago

Well, Santa Claus doesn't operate in Spain so they got confused somewhere when translating the name

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resipsaloquitur 8 points 3 months ago

But Santa Claus is male. Checkmate, español.

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darkdemize 19 points 3 months ago

So up front, I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but I would imagine it's the male and female versions of the word saint. Which is why you get San Sebastion and Santa Maria.

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FloMo 13 points 3 months ago

Native Spanish Speaker here - In a nutshell, yeah that’s pretty much it! =)

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