Talk:Formosa (surname)

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

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)