Above, symbol for Hurricane from the Taino people, who were native to the Caribbean area.
Guabancex is the zemi or deity of chaos and disorder in Taíno mythology and religion, which was practiced by the Taíno people in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba, as well as by Arawak natives elsewhere in the Caribbean. She was described as a mercurial goddess that controlled the weather, conjuring storms known as “juracán” when displeased. The latter term was later used to name the climatological phenomenon that is now known as a hurricane in the Western Hemisphere.
The Taínos were aware of the spiraling wind pattern of hurricanes, a knowledge that they used when depicting the deity. Her zemi idol was said to depict a woman, but the most common depiction of Guabancex presents a furious face with her arms extended in a “~” pattern.
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Below, National Hurricane Center’s symbol for Tropical Storms and hurricanes indicates the counter clockwise rotation of these storms in the Northern Hemisphere.
The indigenous people in the Caribbean had deduced from observation something that satellite imagery confirms – the rotational drive of the Coriolis Effect.
From Juracán we derive the Spanish word huracán and eventually the English word hurricane. As the pronunciation varied across indigenous groups, many of the alternative names, as mentioned in the OED, included furacan, furican, haurachan, herycano, hurachano, hurricano, and so on.[citation needed]
The term made an early appearance in William Shakespeare’s King Lear (Act 3, Scene 2) and in Troilus and Cressida (Act 5, Scene 2), in which Shakespeare gives the following definition:
the dreadful spout Which shipmen do the hurricano call, Constringed [i.e., compressed] in mass by the almighty sun.[2]
