Careybana

Although this is purely speculative, one wonders if the place name, Careybana, may have simply meant a flooded or wet plain. Identified in the Spanish chronicles as an area situated on a plain with a large concentration of people in the cacicazgo of Xaragua, the first part of the name, Carey, bears a slight resemblance to a Palikur word for a flooded plain. According to Launey's book on the Palikur tongue, kariy means flooded plain. While Palikur is an Arawakan language distantly related to Taino, we suspect carey and kariy might be related terms. Sadly, we could not find any similar words in Island Carib, Garifuna, or other Arawakan languages. In the Arawak of Suriname, however, Goeje did record kalhao or kalho as words for grass. Perhaps it is far more likely that Careybana simply meant a wet plain where seaturtles could be easily caught near the coast, assuming carey is really the Taino word for sea turtles.