Talk:El Cuco

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Se llama el coco con~o

Eso depende del lugar. Por ejemplo, aquí en Puerto Rico le llamamos el cuco. Y por casualidad: ñ = alt + 164 ~Alguien

Coco- Del port. côco, fantasma que lleva una calabaza vacía, a modo de cabeza. m. Fantasma que se figura para meter miedo a los niños.(Diccionario de la Real Academia Española).

[edit] Physical description

There have been some vague descriptions of the cuco. He sometimes depicted as an eerie cloked figure, as seen in a painting by Francisco de Goya.Where I am from, He is described as a shadowy human figure with glistening sharp teeth and a piercing stare. The latter description is most likely a racist caricture of blacks, much like the Filipino capre

[edit] Origin of the word

What if the word is of south american, pre-columbian origin? Once I read about the quechua myth of the 'ukuku', a word related to the Uku Pacha or underworld. The creature is still used today to scare children in andean villages. It's also another term for 'bear' in quechua (the other term being ukumari). And according to certain investigations, bears in andean pottery are scarce (even when bears were common and still exist today in Peru) because they were believed to be related to the Uku Pacha. I'll investgate more on this (Because we'll need proof on this), but who knows? Stories from the ukuku and the cuco are too similar, and the myth could have come from there, heard by spanish conquistadores during the conquest or during the colony, and carried to all their other colonies and to their own country.

The "coco" is of pré-roman origin, probably celtiberian. In northen Portugal and Galicia the "coco" is represented by a carved pumpkin lantern just like the jack'o lantern and by a dragon.

(In quechua, u and o vowels sound the same, so their 'u' can be heard as 'o' to us sometimes. If 'cuco' or 'coco' came from 'ukuku', its quechua origin would explain the variants in its name from place to place) -- Taikobo

[edit] Boogey man

Cuco is the same as boogey man in english —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wesborland (talk • contribs) 01:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC).