Talk:Formosa (surname)

Before moving please discus. --Polysophia (talk) 11:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that in Romance languages (and probably other non Romance languages), both nouns and adjectives have gender (male or female). Formosa means "beautiful" as applied to either a person, animal or object that has a feminine gender. For a male person, animal or object, it would be Formoso. Since the word "Island" (Spanish Isla, Portuguese Ilha, Italian Isola, French île) has a feminine gender, Taiwan was named "Formosa". In Spanish, over time, when the letter F was the first letter of a word, the F pronunciation became aspirated and totally disappeared in some instances, but remained as a reminder in the spelling of those words as an "H" (Hermoso, Hermosa) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.11.61.79 (talk) 15:23, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]