Aisén

Aisén or Aysén may refer to the following places in Chile:

• Aisén Region
• Aisén Province
• Aisén, Chile - a commune
• Puerto Aisén - a city

Etymology

The name Aisén may come from the Huilliche word "Achen," meaning "to crumble". Another theory suggests that it was a term used by the Chonos culture meaning "going more to the interior," in reference to the Fjord of Aisén that stretches east from the Moraleda strait.

During the 1990s, it was suggested that the name might be derived from an 1831 map made by captain Robert Fitz-Roy, who made an expedition to the coast on board the Beagle with Charles Darwin and labeled the area around modern Aisén province with the words "Ice End." This theory, however, was largely dismissed because the name "Aysen" appears in documents of the explorer Father Garcia, who made an expedition to this region in 1766, more than 60 years prior to the arrival of the Beagle. Despite this, the Fitz-Roy myth has become popular among the many European tourists who visit Patagonia each year.

Spelling note

All current official documents use Aisén, as this is the name given by the Military Geographic Institute, the authority sanctioning official Chilean place names. This is legally established in Decree 1,439^[1] The spelling Aysén is preferred by people living in the region and is used by the Municipality of Aisén website. Another argument in favor of Aisén is in the nature of the Spanish orthography, which does not use the letter y as a vowel. For example, the word aymará was changed by the Royal Spanish Academy to aimará.^[2]

References