1697 map of the East Indies including the island of Guam
14 April 2021
Guam is a territory of the United States in the Pacific Ocean, the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands. The name comes from the Chamorro name for the island, Guåhån (ours).
Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer sailing under the Spanish flag, led the first European expedition to set foot on the island in 1521. Magellan dubbed the Mariana Islands Islas dos Ladrões (Islands of the Thieves) because the Chamorro inhabitants stole supplies from the expedition. Spanish Jesuits renamed the islands Islas Marianas in the late seventeenth century, after Mariana of Austria, then queen regent of Spain.
Spain took control of the islands in 1667, ruling them for nearly two and half centuries. Spain ceded Guam to the United States on 11 April 1899 as part of the settlement of the Spanish-American War.
The name Guam appears in English by 1697, when William Dampier uses it in his A New Voyage Round the World. That book uses the name in its subtitle:
Describing particularly the Isthmus of America, Several Coasts and Islands in the West Indies, the Isles of Cape Verd, the passage by Terra del Fuego, the South Sea coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico; the Isle of Guam one of the Ladrones, Mindanao, and other Philippine and East-India islands near Cambodia, China, Formosa, Luconia, Celebes, &c., New Holland, Sumatra, Nicobar Isles, the Cape of Good Hope, and Santa Hellena
And the passage about Dampier’s sighting of Guam reads:
The 20th day of May, our Bark being about 3 leagues a head of our Ship, sailed over a rocky shole, on which there was but 4 fathom water and abundance of Fish swimming about the Rocks. They imagind by this that the Land was not far off; so they clapt on a Wind with the Barks head to the North, and being past the Shole lay by for us. When we came up with them, Captain Teat came aboard us, and related what he had seen. We were then in lat. 12 d. 55 m. steering West. The Island Guam is laid down in Lat. 13 d. N. by the Spaniards, who are Masters of it, keeping it as a baiting place as they go to the Philippine Islands. Therefore we clapt on a Wind and stood to Northward, being somewhat troubled and doubtful whither we were right, because there is no Shole laid down in the Spanish drafts about the Island Guam. At 4 a clock, to our great joy, we saw the Island Guam, at about 8 leagues distance.
Sources:
Dampier, William. A New Voyage Round the World. London: James Knapton, 1697, 283. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Image credit: Unknown cartographer. Map appears in William Dampier’s 1697 A New Voyage Round the World between pages 282 and 283. Public domain image.