The name of Patagonia: a critical genealogy

Abstract

This article describes a book that discusses the origin of the name of the Patagonia region that picks up on an original and illuminating idea by Professor María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, published in 1952. At the same time, it reclaims the name of an unknown philologist, Joseph de Perott (or Joseph Perott), who, almost five decades before Professor Lida de Malkiel, published a brief and nearly inaccessible “communication” in an Italian journal of philology suggesting the same idea. This article reinstates this philologist’s original idea and helps to complete what we may consider a critical genealogy concerning the name of the southernmost region of the American continent.