Why Is Texas Called Texas?

This is a question we can sink our teeth into. Fairly recently (in terms of a historical time frame), in 2019, a book brought about a Texas historical scholarly debate on this issue. Archeologist and historian Jorge Luis Garcia Ruiz published Texas: The False Origin of the Name. Mr. Ruiz has a point—a well-researched point. 

We begin with the historically accepted version up to Ruiz’s published findings in 2019. 

Spanish Tejas: Where We Accept the Origin of the of Name “Texas” 

The letter “x” in Spanish in the middle ages in Spain was pronounced “sh”. In Spanish spoken in Mexico and Texas today, “x” and sometimes “j” are pronounced “ha”. In the late 1600s, Friar Damián Massanet used “j” to spell “Tejas”. Spanish orthographists began using “x” instead of “j” later on. 

In the border states, we always think it is funny when out-of-state newscasters pronounce the English “x” or “j” version for Spanish names of towns, streets, etc. Mexico’s Spanish differs from Spain’s Spanish. For example, like in the pronunciation of the letters “c”, “z”, and “ci” before the letters “e” and “i”, they use a breathy “th” sound in Spain, and more like an “s” or “z” sound in Mexico.

That was not an issue in the late 1600s when the long-accepted historical account of how Texas got its name occurred. The Paleo Indians from between 9,200 B.C. to 6,000 B.C. were the first Indians to inhabit present day Texas. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department publishes a children’s study/play work-book that reports Europeans first had contact with Indians in Texas from 1,500 B.C. onward. 

In 1690, Friar Damián Massanet accompanied General Alonso De León, governor of the state of Coahuila, Spain, or also New Spain (in today’s Mexico), to establish a Spanish presence in Texas. Friar Massanet founded the Mission San Francisco de los Tejas near the Neches River in East Texas that year.

On A Mission

General De León wanted to post 50 soldiers at the new mission. Friar Massanet would only allow five soldiers to remain. The two officials were in sharp disagreement over the amount of soldiers. Friar Massanet contended, “There was no necessity at all to leave a large military force in the district since the people were so peaceable and friendly.”

It is ironic that Friar Massanet burned down his mission in 1693 and returned to Spain’s Mexico because of continuing disputes with the Caddo people inhabiting the region. He also declined later requests to establish other missions in Texas. That was not the case at first. Friar Massenet’s first encounters with the Caddo people reinforces his motives for his initial disagreements with General De León.

Mission San Francisco de los Tejas’ three-year operations marked the first foot in the door for Spain’s efforts to bring the vast land of Texas under the Spanish flag. The Texas Almanac records that Spain established 35 missions in Texas between 1632 and 1793. From about 700 A.D. to 1,300 A.D., the early Caddos were a sect of an aggregated agricultural society.

When Friar Massanet first met the Caddo people in East Texas, they called the friar “teycha”, a Caddo word for “friend” or “ally.” The Caddos did not have a written alphabet or language. Friar Massanet recorded “teycha” with the spelling of “Tejas”.

Enter Jorge Luis Garcia Ruiz: 2019

Jorge LuisGarcía Ruiz, from Madrid and who now lives in San Antonio, took the career path as an independent historian and archaeologist. He grew up in Spain and reported that he had never thought about how the name Texas evolved. Then someone asked him about it after he moved to San Antone.

Mr. Ruiz studied hundreds of books, poured through hundreds of original documents, and analyzed as much scholarly research as he could get his hands on. He published what he found in his bilingual book, and he changed the historical landscape of how Texas got its name.

Mr. Ruiz found that when Friar Massanet met Caddos in the 1690s and recorded “Tejas”, that it was not the first time that Spanish explorers had used the term to name the lands of Texas. Ruiz reported to the Texas Standard n in 2019, “We have documents that say in 1606, 83 years before that meeting, the Spaniards had already known the Indian Tejas.”

The Theory

Mr. Ruiz proposes his theory that, during the Spanish colonization period of North, Central, and South America, it was not the Spanish protocol to adopt native names in their attempts to settle their territories. Most Texas cities, counties, landmarks, and rivers that carry Spanish language names were given to them by Spaniards. So Ruiz wondered why the name “Tejas” would be an exception. 

If “teycha” meant friend, from what other Caddo words could “Tejas” have originated? Yew trees grow in Spain but do not grow in East Texas. Bald Cypress trees serve as an iconic East Texas presence and are similar to yew trees in appearance. Mr. Ruiz is on record saying that the bald cypress tree’s Latin name, Taxodium distichum, literally means “similar to the yew”. 

Mr. Ruiz believes that the Spanish word for yew tree, “teja” or possibly “tejo” *, is the genuine origin for the name “Texas”. He theorized that the Spaniards named the new land they had discovered after Spain’s look-alike yew trees. Texas Outside did not find an online Latin translator that translated “taxodium distichum” to English.

The account of Friar Massanet against Ruiz’s research throws the timeline off kilter. Texas’ state motto is “Friendship”, and a vital part of the State of Texas’ marketable identity. The resistance to a different reason for how Texas received its name could crack the foundation of the State of Texas’ official identity.

Because of the expected resistance to his research, Mr. Ruiz reported to the Texas Standard, “It’s more simple to exit it, it’s like a commercial, like a slogan. The name of the state is related to friendship, and it’s a native word. It’s marketable.” Historians will study Ruiz’s thesis word by word and date by date to discover if it will hold water.

* The “a” in “teja” implies the female gender, and the “o” in tejo implies the male gender. More than likely, “teja” was the word used in 1606. The Latin language uses masculine, feminine, and neuter genders for nouns because it inherited a three-gender system from Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European, its oldest form, comprised two gender-like categories for nouns: animate and inanimate. The inanimate category evolved into the neuter gender in Latin and its descendant languages. The animate category evolved into masculine and feminine genders.