Talk:Salvador Fernandes Zarco
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[edit] Sigla & monogram
This theory sounds nice and good. But isn't a much simpler theory about Columbus' sigla that when he wrote a symbol for "Christ" and then the Latin word "ferens" that represented Christofer? His name means "bearer of Christ", and if his sigla representing "He who bears Christ" I think Occam's razor is that when signing his name, he was signing his name. --Deville (Talk) 07:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't necessarily disprove the very possible Portuguese roots, however.
As cryptic as the sigla is, or may be, the obvious-ness of the name "Christopher" does beg the question, "What's his last name, then?"
If the intention is to be cryptic on more than one level, discovering/deciphering any last name from the sigla alone would still leave you the additional step of linking it to the name "Salvador Fernandes Zarco". That is to say, it would not seem "enough" to only un-obviously place the name "Cristoferens" in the sigla, but to encrypt the last name "Colon" into it, and additionally bury a "real name" below it.
Why would any person wholly omit his last name, in any signature? Unless it can be suggested that "Columbus" or "Colombo" are somehow hidden in the sigla, the best suggestion we have thus far is the "Colon" last name, and that has been found documented twice in the Vatican Library, written out and not encrypted.
This is made even more interesting by the first name "Cristofom" (with a tilde over the "o"), recorded in the Papal Bulls (1493) at the Vatican Library. The tilde-"o" is uniquely an old Portuguese usage, commonly seen today as a tilde over the Portuguese "-ao" suffix. Hence, "Cristofom" would be "Cristovao" today, both equivalents of "Christopher" in any case.
The best support this (Cristofom Colon = Salvador Fernandes Zarco) theory has, is the genealogy of S.F.Zarco.
I recommend reading the discussion at these three links:
http://amigosdacuba.no.sapo.pt/paginas/p16-christopher_columbus.htm
http://www.saudades.org/columbus.html
http://www.colaco.net/3/colon.htm
.. and, of course, Dr. da Silva's write-up:
http://www.apol.net/dightonrock/columbus_was_100_portuguese.htm
While it may be considered a "stretch" to prove the monogram contains specifically "S,F,Z", a lot of circumferential information contrives to support the theory. Only nobility may bear a coat of arms, not a poor Genoese weaver/sailor. (Note the tongue-in-cheek paragraph "Noble Marriage" on the AmigosDaCuba webpage, listed above.) Only Portuguese citizens were permitted to crew vessels of the Portuguese fleet, which discovered the Bahamas. Zarco's Portuguese-Jewish mother would be a source of his knowledge of Hebrew, thus the use of Lamed (the S at the end of XpoFERENS), and the understanding of its (implied) meaning when inverted. The "Xpo" indicates a knowledge of Greek; the "FERENS", a knowledge of Latin; together, a level of education not expected of a poor weaver. The line/accent mark over the "o" stresses the 2nd syllable, not the first (i.e. Cristó- vs Christo-), more common to Spanish and Portuguese than ever to Italian.
All in all, in the light of more recent discoveries, and theories put forward, there's much to think about, concerning the True History of "Christopher Columbus"..!
-- ChrisDS, April 2006 (Happy Easter!)
