Aysen
Encyclopedia
Aisén or Aysén may refer to the following places in Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

:
  • Aisén Region
  • Aisén Province
    Aisén Province
    Aisén Province is one of four provinces of the Chilean region of Aisen . Its capital is Puerto Aisén.-Demographics:The province had a 2002 population of 23,498 according to the census by the National Statistics Institute. Of these, 16,180 lived in urban areas and 13,451 in rural areas. Between...

  • Aisén, Chile
    Aisén, Chile
    Aisén is a Chilean commune located in Aisén Province, Aisén Region. It is home to the city of Puerto Aisén and to the towns of Villa Mañiguales and Puerto Chacabuco.-Demographics:...

     - a commune
  • Puerto Aisén - a city

Etymology

The name Aisén may come from the Huilliche
Huilliche
The Huilliche is an ethnic group of Chile, belonging to the Mapuche culture. They live in mountain valleys in an area south of Toltén River and on Chiloé Archipelago...

 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
Aisén Fjord
Aisén Fjord is an ~70 km long fjord stretching east from a skerry-guarded region called Moraleda Channel , which is a body of water separating the Chonos Archipelago from the mainland of Chile. It is located at and is connected indirectly to the open coast of the Pacific Ocean via the Darwin...

 that stretches east from the Moraleda strait
Moraleda Channel
Moraleda Channel is a body of water separating the Chonos Archipelago from the mainland of Chile. It is located at . Southward from the mouth of the Aisén Fjord, Moraleda Channel divides into two arms. The east arm, called Canal Costa , is the main one...

.

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
Beagle
The Beagle is a breed of small to medium-sized dog. A member of the Hound Group, it is similar in appearance to the Foxhound, but smaller, with shorter legs and longer, softer ears. Beagles are scent hounds, developed primarily for tracking hare, rabbit, and other game...

 with Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 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 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
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...

to aimará.
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