"Val" does mean "valley" in French, but it is an old term, only used nowadays
in some palce names. The current term is "vallée".
It's "val" in galician and in occitan and "vall" in catalan.
I find in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valparaíso ) that:
Spanish explorers arrived in 1536, [...] under the command of Juan de Saavedra,
who named the town after his native village of Valparaíso de Arriba in Cuenca,
Spain.
and also (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valparaíso):
posiblemente su nombre a una abreviación de "Va al Paraíso de Arriba" o "Valle
Paraíso de Arriba", ya que a pocos kilómetros de ahí valle abajo, se encuentra
otro pueblo llamado "Valparaíso de Abajo", con similar acepción
Now how OT is all this .-) (and how disconencted from the title of this post)
Bernard
Quoting Fernando Gonzalez Gentile (13/12/07):
>sorry I'm posting this in a rush. you're right Moose, "valle" is not a
>common word in <spoken> Spanish here at the Río de la Plata, I think due
>to phonetics regarding the "...ll...".
>
>agree with Chris on the first paragraph he wrote, regarding "Castellano
>and "Spanish (Español)".
>
>regards,
>
>Fernando.
>
>Moose wrote:
>>
>> , but "val" isn't a current Spanish word according to my
> > diccionairos, it means valley in French.
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