Origin of Chile's name

How Chile Got Its Name, the country that is..

The word is pronounced Hele (He, as in heel, then le, as in the name Lee, accent in the second syllable). It means a peninsula or the end of a strip of land that juts into the sea. This meaning is in the Greek language, or to be more exact, in the ancient Greek language. So what the ancient Greeks have to do with Chile? A good question, but a lot has been written on the subject, but unfortunately not from expert language specialists. The obvious similarities between native Mapuche (Chilean) language and ancient Greek cannot be easily dismissed, so many scholars have pointed them out especially in the book by the Chilean chief, Lonko (or chief) Kilapan in 1973 which has been translated into modern Greek and has become quite popular.

The peninsula we are talking about is not very easy to see on a modern map of Chile. The southern end of the country (where the road stops and the land is not inhabited, because it is full of glaciers and big mountains) ends into an island called Chiloe, which is pronounced Hele, or the name of the country, Chile. What happened to the peninsula then? Well, to find the answer to that question, one has to remember that about 10,000 years ago (8,000 years B.C.) the Ice Age had ended and the water that used to be ice had run into the ocean and thus the ocean level rose by about 60 to 100 m. As it did, it flooded previously low-lying areas, possibly with human settlements. This phenomenon has been described as the Big Flood in the legends of many early peoples. There is one exception: ancient Greece. In the extensive legends of the ancient Greeks there is not one Big Flood, but two separate Floods. That, however, is another big story.

Now, in the tradition of the ancient Mapuche there was one event that caused the sea level to rise and the end of the peninsula became an island. That island preserved the name the people originally referred to as “ the peninsula”. When their land became a country, that name became the name of the country.

How could the ancient Greeks get to Chile is a matter of great debate. Well, the Greeks (ancient as well as moderns) have always been sea-fearing peoples that the ancient Egyptians referred to as the “Sea Peoples”. From the earliest age they had traveled far and wide. Travelling across the Mediterranean was considered a routine, small journey. They were familiar with the shape of Africa, for example, well before the 3^rd century B.C. That suggests extensive journeys for many years. Besides travelling they wrote their observations too, even if some of them have not survived themselves we know of these writing, because other writers mentioned them.

Many ideas have been put forward and several books have been published on the subject of ancient Greeks in Chile. Some claim a route along the Amazon and through Peru, another claim arrival from the west by way of the Pacific islands. Trails of Greek names have been found both throughout South America and across the Pacific islands, so it will be a Herculean task to solve that problem.