A Brand New Patagonia or, Patterson and Gimlin Walk into a Sand Bar
(Preface: Lots of personal favorites in this one, I notice.)
Patagonia the company is, of course, named after Patagonia the region. That part of South America belonging to Chile and Argentina, generally lying south of the Rio Negro. The word is a toponym; a place name. And, toponyms just happen to be my favorite kind words to shove me down that delightful rabbit hole called etymology. Coming to mind is my personal favorite, which I like to emphasize when ever I can, especially on two Sunday’s a year, and is a burrow located on the waterfront of Green Bay, Wisconsin. I want to toss a bone to any Francophonic readers once again, in allowing them to translate La Baie des Puants for me. That is, after all, what the French explorers at first called their fort on Lake Michigan’s southwesterly protruding bay. In English: The Bay of Stinks. It seems clear to me that those voyageurs of yore must’ve possessed some clairvoyant abilities.
But we’re all well aware of the foul odors and such that can be found in Brown County, Wisconsin. I think it best to use Harrison Ford’s words from American Graffiti by saying that these stenches’ can attributed to a color palette of “puke yellow and piss green” that one sees by the bay, and throughout America’s Dairyland.
Anyway.
The Patagonia apparel we all know and love — with the word emblazoned underneath an inky pastel sunset on shirts and hats — actually has quite an entertaining rabbit hole itself.
But first, I can’t resist giving a little lesson on toponymical suffixes. If you’re like me and couldn’t read a more delightful setting of expectation for the following paragraph, please continue. If, on the other hand, that sounds like a snooze fest to you, then 1.) I cannot relate and, 2.) read it anyway, please, because the spirit of it really ties this whole piece together.
Anyone who’s spent much time around a world map will have noticed the astounding number of countries, territories, and even loosely defined parts of the world ending with two little letters: -ia. Quite simply, this is a latin suffix meaning — or is at least synonymous with — land. We have our Englands, and Thailands, and Zealands new and old, which are all toponyms that, to us, come across as fairly self-explanatory. But just the same could be said for the Slovenias, Namibias, and Cambodia’s of the world; nations that have that -ia attached to their rears. For them, you might read Land of the Namibs, or Land of the Slovenes, etc. However, -ia isn’t the only suffix like this that emphasizes itself on the map. Those former SSRs and other members of Central Asia — the Kazakhstans, Afghanistans, and Kyrgyzstans of the world — have toponyms that are constructed the same way. Only, their land-suffix-of-choice is the old Persian one, -istan. Land of the Kazakhs, for example. And, if you’ll bear with me for just one more example, my personal favorite, one that we Anglophones don’t get to spend much time with, is the Hungarian -ország that finishes out Hungary’s name for itself (and one of my personal favorite words, sonically) Magyarország. Look around a map labeled in Hungarian, and you’ll see Finnország, Írország and many others.
With that said, here’s where Patagonia gets amusing.
Sailing for Spain in 1519, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan embarked on a journey that would become the first recorded circumnavigation of our Earth (albeit not completed by him, as his life was claimed by a bamboo spear in the Philippines), and a journey which would have a good deal of toponymical consequences. Not the least of which being the Straits of Magellan on Chile’s southernly tip, and Tierra del Fuego in the same neighborhood. But perhaps less well known was the seed that would grow into our beloved Patagonia. For, along for the ride was Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar who wrote, upon landing on a beach belonging to modern day Argentina, that the entire mission witnessed a “…half-naked giant so tall that human beings only stood to its waist.” The mission’s name for this giant? Patagón or, big-foot.
Land of the Big-foot, so we might call the land south of the Rio Negro.
Who knows if Yvon is aware of this. That his household brand name pays homage to a place that got its name, as I can conceivably see it, one of two ways: the first, from a gross exaggeration of what was probably just a taller native fellow or, second, pure imagination. For, as Harvey points out (how many of you read the preface?) it was not uncommon at the time — or even before or since — for explorers to report fantastical creatures, sights, places, etc. that didn’t really exist, in order to supply them with their fifteen minutes of fame upon returning home.
Well, it seems Toni Pigafetta got his quarter-hour and much, much more.
So, the next time you dawn your fleece or vest or shirt or hat with that vivid sunset across the front, you can take pride in the fact that you’re repping the territory of a being whose dominating feature is not unlike the one of North America’s good ol’ Sasquatch. I know I will never be able to shake this. Instead, now whenever I see the logo, I suspect my brain chemistry will replace it with a loping humanoid on a stony river bank, as if to read, I believe.
