So Lynn and I are driving back from San Jose Tuesday afternoon… and we pass a town. The town is called, I kid you not, “Los Banos” – which, if memory servers, is roughly “the bathrooms” in Spanish.
How would you like to be from there? “Where you from Johnny?” “I’m from the bathrooms!”
Yeesh.
You’re correct in remembering that “el baño” is generally how we would say “bathroom.”
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/entry?lb=e&p=num%3As2983
This comes from the verb “bañar,” which generally means “to bathe.” Hence, “baño” can mean a “bathroom” as in “a place of bathing” or, more generally, “a bath,” as opposed just to “the room with the shitter.”
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/entry?lb=e&p=num%3As2979
According to the City of Los Baños, the city took it name from “the seasonal spring baths that feed natural wetlands in the western San Joaquin Valley.”
http://www.losbanos.org/web/index.html
Perhaps this illustrates how much I don’t want to do school work during this last week of classes 🙂
Rob
As your first commentor noted, saying that you’re from “Los Banos” is no “stupider” than saying that you’re from Bath, England; and each town derived its name from a similar source. I find “Atascadero” funnier in its meaning…
http://www.americanprofile.com/issues/20010513/20010513we_848.asp
I disagree. The direct translation is “bath,” but it’s commonly used to mean “bathroom.”