Few things about Anguilla’s history and culture make me madder than to hear an Anguillian refer to “Meads Bay”.
Recently, I heard on Radio Anguilla the Mighty Beaver’s 1970s calypso with the chorus lines,
If you miss your woman on August Thursday,
She downatn Maiz Bay, She down at Maiz Bay.
Beaver’s pronunciation is clear and unmistakable: “Maiz Bay”. He does not sing, “Maids Bay”, and certainly not “Meads Bay.” He uses the original Long Bay Village pronunciation, Maiz Bay. In the same way, genuine natives of Blowing Point Village use the original pronunciation, “Blown Point.” That is the spelling in the original deeds for the area. Only persons from The Valley and further afield refer to the place as “Blowing Point.”
And then, for decades, Anguillians forgot the original pronunciation and began to call the place Maids Bay. Now, they call it Meads Bay. How did this awful change occur? Do Anguillians have no shame at rejecting Anguilla culture? The history and meaning of the name of this village is or should be sacred and remembered. Instead, we seem to surrender our history and culture to the first foreign assault.
I well remember many years ago when I was researching the origins of Anguillian placenames, a Mr John Connor, an elderly gentleman, originally a native of Long Bay Village, who was visiting Anguilla from Slough, Bucks, came with his almost equally elderly son to visit me at my home in North Hill. I learned he was an avid student of the history and culture of Anguilla. He was full of fascinating stories of the old days in Anguilla. It was he who told me the origins of the name.
According to Mr Connor, the village was originally named in Spanish “Bahia Maiz”, or Maiz Bay. He did not recall how Anguilla, which had never been occupied by the Spanish, came to have a bay named in Spanish. But he recalled he was told by his grandparents that was the original name. He told me that in later years Anguillians forgot the Spanish roots and gave it the nearest English equivalent, “Maids Bay”. He told me that Maiz Bay was the pronunciation he knew all the years he was growing up in Long Bay Village. I believe him because that was the way the bay was called when I came to live in Anguilla in the mid-1970s. It was only after tourism took off in the late 1990s and early 2000s that one began to hear of “Meads Bay”.
As he told the story, sometime in the early 1960s, a British survey team arrived in Anguilla to do the first ordnance survey of Anguilla. Anguilla had never been surveyed before that. The most accurate map of Anguilla up to that point was the 1921 map done for the John Burdon map of St Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla. This showed only the outline of Anguilla, with no internal features of any kind.
Because there was no existing map, there was no guidance as to placenames for the surveyors as they moved from place to place setting up their survey points. They were forced to rely on locals. There was in the 1960s no other reliable source of local information. The British surveyors were forced to fall back on the nearest local person they chanced upon for advice on names and spellings.
Many spelling mistakes resulted, as can be seen in these early maps of the 1960s. One was the spelling of Zakers’ in South Valley, which became Sachassas. Another was Katouche Bay south of Crocus Bay, which they were told was named after the French general, M de la Touche. So, they spelled it Latouche Bay on the map they prepared. A third was Maiz Bay, which is now incorrectly spelled and pronounced Meads Bay.
When the surveyors asked the locals what the bay was named, they were told it was Maids Bay. Nonsense, they responded. There is no surname “Maid” in the English language. There is no trace in the records of anyone called Maid living in the area. It was impossible for anyone to have named it Maids Bay. This must be a mistake for the well-known English surname Mead which the Anguillians were simply mispronouncing. So, that is what they wrote down in their survey notes. That is the way they spelled the name when they came to complete their map. And, to our shame, that is the way we Anguillians have learned to pronounce the area where once the Amerindians and later the earliest Anguillians grew fields of corn over the sand bank that now separates the pond from the nearby ocean.
Can I make a heart-felt plea? Can we do away with the pronunciation Meads Bay. Can we please go back to the authentic Maiz Bay? That, after all, is the way the people of Long Bay Village pronounce the word, and they should know as it is their bay. The Mighty Beaver had it right.
