Taguzgalpa

Taguzgalpa was a region on the Caribbean coast of Central America lying between the Roman (Aguán) River and the San Juan River. Of Nahuatl origin, the term was first translated by the Spanish cleric Cristóbal de Pedraza in his 1544 Relación de la Provincia de Honduras e Higueras, based on information gathered during his tenure in Honduras (1538–1540). Pedraza reported that after a three-day ascent into the mountains behind Trujillo—likely the modern Sierra de la Esperanza—local informants explained Tagusgualpa to mean “the house where gold is melted,” referring to a principal settlement in the region where inhabitants from surrounding areas gathered to smelt gold. It appeared on the Dutch map of Montanus in 1671 with an alternate spelling of "Tiguzigalpa."

It was frequently confused in nineteenth-century travel literature with Tegucigalpa, the present capital of Honduras, and it is possible that both words share the same root. However, a study of the location information of the two places in the original sixteenth- and seventeenth- century sources shows that they are not in the same place, and are both mentioned, in different areas in the same texts. In his classic study of indigenous names in Honduras, Alberto Membreño wrote, "For a long time it was believed that Tegucigalpa was a corruption of Taguzgalpa and that it meant 'mountain of silver.' Tegucigalpa did not form a part of Taguzgalpa, and when this province was conquered, Tegucigalpa already existed. Don Pedro de Alvarado wrote Teguycegalpa in the repartimiento of 1536." Membreño gives the etymology of Taguzgalpa as "tlalli, 'earth', cuztic, 'yellow', calli, 'house', and pan, 'in'. This province is so called because there is a great deal of gold on its surface and in the sands of its rivers; and it refers to the tradition that the Mexicans went to Taguzgalpa to take that metal to Moctezuma."