Galapagos Islands

name

Etymology: From Spanish islas Galápagos, first attested as New Latin insulae de los galopegos (“islands of the turtles”) in Abraham Ortelius's 1570 atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, from a variant spelling of Spanish galápago (“turtle”), from Paleo-Hispanic. Cf. Catalan calàpet (“toad”) and Portuguese cágado (“turtle”).

1. An archipelago off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean, famed for their influence on Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.