goam

Updated: May 10, 2025

"This island of Goam is high and mountainous, and throughout, even to its seacoast, is filled with groves of cocoa-palms and other trees, and thickly inhabited. Even in the valleys, where there are rivers, it is inhabited.

- The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 02 of 55 : 1521-1569 : Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

"The father prior talked with them, using the few words of their language that he remembered, especially counting up to ten, whereat they manifested great pleasure; and one of them mentioned the name Gonzalo, which as the father prior said, was the name of a Spaniard who had been found in one of those islands, which was called Goam."

- The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — Volume 02 of 55 : 1521-1569 : Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

Hahn avers that 'Tsui Goab, originally Tsuni Goam, was the name by which the Red Men called the Infinite. As the Frenchman said of the derivation of jour from dies, we may hint that the Infinite thus transformed into a lame Hottentot 'bush-doctor' is diablement change en route. To a dead lame sorcerer from the Infinite is a fall indeed. The process of the decline is thus described.

Andrew Lang - Custom and Myth