Talk:Saco Bay

A fact from Saco Bay appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 July 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Saco Bay on the Maine coast was named in 1525 by the Spanish cartographer Esteban Gómez for the resemblance of its southern pool to the outline of a sack?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/July.

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Additional: French explorers also reached the Bay, and may have brokered a peace agreement between two Indian tribes while here. [1] I didn't follow up on this. Presumably there has to be more history also, but I didn't find it on Google. I know that there are multiple islands in the bay, but not how many or the names of any others, and that Stratton Island is named for someone who settled it in the 17^th century. GRBerry 03:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology[edit]

The articles for Saco Bay and the Saco River (which drains into it) give totally different etymologies for the name. Anyone with the time to look into it further may want to try to track down the legitimacy of both. BumblyBea (talk) 18:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- Wandering in several years later. The only source for the Portuguese language explanation is a book which reads, without citation, "For many years historians have tried to tie the linguistic roots of the name Saco to the Abenaki language. The name is actually derived from a map of the coastline made in 1525 by the Spanish explorer Esteban Gomez. He named the bay at the mouth of the river Bahia de Saco (Bay of the Sack)." Such a discovery would be amazing, as the maps attributable to Gomez's voyage were drawn by Diego Ribero, and Ribero's famous 1529 map doesn't mention Saco Bay at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Est%C3%AAv%C3%A3o_Gomes#/media/File:Map_of_America-Ribero_(1529).jpeg --Oswako (talk) 22:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]