El Graduado
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I had an interesting exchange with Henry the other day on this board regarding the name Palancar.
It got me to thinking of other place-names on Cozumel and the nearby coast that were non-Mayan and how they came to be commonly used today. One of them that I find interesting is Punta Allen.
There is an old Cozumel family with the last name of Allen with property on the coast of the mainland. If you ask anybody around the island where Punta Allen’s name came from, they will invariably point to this family. But that is not where the point got its name at all. It was named in 1832, by Captain Allen Bird and he named it after himself. He was one of two Royal English Navy captains (the other was Richard Owen) sent by the Crown to chart the coast of Yucatan, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua that year. In 1838, the chart they made was published (see below) and it carried several new English language place-names that they bestowed on points along the Quintana Roo Coast. One was Allen Point. Another was Blossom Point (which Allen named after his ship, the HMS Blossom). Allen Point (now Punta Allen) is the only one of the names from that 1838 expedition that stuck.
It got me to thinking of other place-names on Cozumel and the nearby coast that were non-Mayan and how they came to be commonly used today. One of them that I find interesting is Punta Allen.
There is an old Cozumel family with the last name of Allen with property on the coast of the mainland. If you ask anybody around the island where Punta Allen’s name came from, they will invariably point to this family. But that is not where the point got its name at all. It was named in 1832, by Captain Allen Bird and he named it after himself. He was one of two Royal English Navy captains (the other was Richard Owen) sent by the Crown to chart the coast of Yucatan, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua that year. In 1838, the chart they made was published (see below) and it carried several new English language place-names that they bestowed on points along the Quintana Roo Coast. One was Allen Point. Another was Blossom Point (which Allen named after his ship, the HMS Blossom). Allen Point (now Punta Allen) is the only one of the names from that 1838 expedition that stuck.
