UNIVERSIDAD NAGIONAL 
INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS NATURALES 
NUMERO 
APARTADO POSTAL N° 2535 
TELEFONO 5971 
BOGOTA - COLOMBIA 
SECCION 
Bogota, March 25, 1941 
Dr. Alexander Wetmore, 
Ri oha cha« 
Bear Dr. Wet nor e: 
It is now nearly 5:00 in the afternoon and as I am writing 
you, I just can’t help to imagine at at this very moment, you, 
Dr. ©arriker and Carlos Lehmann must be quite busy "skinning to¬ 
day's work" somewhere between Pundacion and Riohacha. 
I do sincerely hope that the trip has been so far, and will 
always be, a most pleasant one as I have no doubt that it will 
be quite interesting in its results. We all have an excellent 
and grateful memory of your visit to Bogota and only wish that 
it will be repeated soon. 
Ferhaps you will have time to find out how the name of the 
Peninsula is pronounced there, and therefore how it whould be 
written. There are, as you know, three different spellings: G0A- 
GIRA, GOAJIRA and GUAJIRA. It seems that the latter is the most 
accurate and has thus been officially adopted for geographical 
maps, on the grounds that the particle goa has no standing or 
meaning in indigenous languages of Soutn America, whereas gua is 
found in scores of words like in Arigua.nl, Chiriguana, Paraguai- 
poa, Guaviare, guarana, guacimo, guaco, etc. etc., and even in 
Paraguay and Uruguay. But others say, with reason, that the na¬ 
me is not even used by the peninsular Indians themselves who call 
each other guayu; they furthermore pretend that the name GOAGIRA 
was the first~T?) used b 3 r the Spaniards, centuries ago. Por what 
reason, nobody seems to be aware... 
Sven the name guay u has the particle gua and as this word 
seems reasonably enough to hove been the "etymological" source 
of the name given by the Spaniards to the Peninsula, I wonder 
if those who favor GUAJIRA are not, after all, in the right. 
The question of writing with G or with J may be settled in 
favor of the latter as many words in Spanish, which used to be 
written with G in the past, are now quite correctly written with 
J. huger and mu^er are typical examples. 
All of this may sound rather academic but as you are to wri¬ 
te on the birds of the G,.. (whatever the spelling may be), it may 
help to do some"research" work on that subject while you are "al 
pie de la vaca" . 
With my best wishes for all of y "* ' ‘.'* ?ly 
yours, 
A. Dug and 
