6:15 p.m.
One of the first reactions you get from a Spaniard when you mention the town “Cebolla” is a look of incredulity, as if you have just confessed that your uncle, the same one who taught you how to play Texas Hold ‘em, is now a drag queen. Cebolla in Spanish means “onion” and to say that you are going to visit a town called “Onion” provokes laughter because most have never heard of it and don’t believe there is a town with a name that reminds them of green salad and bad breath. They chuckle and say, “¡Anda ya! (Yeah, right!)” figuring I’m American and did not hear the name correctly.
I don’t see what all the suspicion was all about. After all, there are quirky names for towns all over the globe. In the United States, you can drive into and order coffee in places like Intercourse, Nimrod, Lick Fork, Ding Dong, Coupon, Embarrass, Experiment, Hell, New Erection, and even Chicken (Alaska) where predictably there is a sign on the outskirts touting “I got laid in Chicken”. And let’s not get started with the British towns, where a traveler can visit and even spend the night in communities like Scratchy Bottom, River Piddle, Cockplay, Brown Willy, Nob End, to name just a lewd few. And it’s not only how it’s called, it’s how the Brits say it. I mean, they have that academic accent of theirs that sounds so official (when not officious) as they announce in all seriousness, “I was born in Twatt, but my mom’s from Upper Twatt.” And they expect me not to laugh.
Spain has its share of witty names too. Places like Guarromán, which sounds like a Spanglish blend for “Dirty Man”, Montamarta (Marta’s a goer), Berga (Cock) or Villapene (Prickville) come to mind. Still, few Spaniards are aware of these amusing toponyms, which is why they just can’t imagine anyone naming their hometown after a bulb.
Knowing my country’s love for idiosyncrasy, I was sure there would be at least one equivalent in the United States, mainly because there is a name for practically everything there. If you have a Burnt Porcupine (Maine), why on Earth wouldn’t there be an Onion, Kansas, for instance? But to my surprise, there is hardly anything at all. And what little there is leaves a lot to be desired.
Ironically, the first direct equivalent uses the Spanish name. You could stop in Cebolla, New Mexico, but only if you want to. It’s a community in the north of the state, which possibly got its name from its equal in Spain, but it has never been incorporated and exists thanks to its unassuming population of 91. It’s basically in the middle of nowhere. My guess is that it’s probably the second-to-last place on Earth you’d want to be when your car breaks down in the middle of the night.
Then you have Oniontown, New York, which just might be the first. Oniontown is a village with a fairly unenviable reputation for being a humble district steeped in inbreeding, extreme white trash poverty, and longsuffering drug and alcohol abuse. A veritable trident of disgrace, I tell you. It is located all but 85 miles from one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, New York, which goes to show that the United States continues to be a land of stark contrasts.
Just like its sister community in New Mexico, Oniontown is not an official township but rather a rundown neighborhood on literally a dead-end street known as Onion Road, located within the limits of a municipality called Dover Plains. About a dozen years ago its derelict and grungy appearance earned dubious international notoriety thanks to a video filmed by a group of moronic college students who ventured into the area to gawk at and make fun of its disheveled residents. They posted their adventures online and it went viral. Many people were equally shocked by both the callousness of the unwanted visitors and the bumpkin lifestyle of the people who lived there, but my guess is that most watched it just to gawk, too. Human nature and such.
The students probably deserved to have their asses kicked in, but got away with it. Rather than expose the residents’ dire situation to the rest of the world and trigger a call to come to their aid, their offensive behavior mostly just prompted more young and inconsiderate pricks to try and do the same. That’s usually what happens in these cases. Human nature and such. But it seems that the locals wisened up and made sure future intruders left with fewer teeth and a bone or two no longer intact. So I guess some justice was done.
The residents prefer to keep to themselves and the police department has done its part to warn outsiders to mind their own business and respect others’ privacy. As they should. Oniontown goes about its business without the slightest desire to improve its situation, and I guess that is their prerogative, though I question how fair it is to deprive the coming generations of a chance for a better way of life. In any event, it’s safe to say that the good people of Cebolla, Spain, will not be seeking town-twinning with this community in Dutchess County any time soon.
Ah, yes, by the way, they also say that the name “Chicago” is the Miami tribe word for “stinky onion”. I’ll make sure my friends from the Windy City are aware of that.
Paradoxically, the town of Cebolla has nothing to do with the pungent vegetable, nor is the produce particular to those parts. You can find onions just about anywhere in Spain, and I promise you no one travels to this community from afar to purchase a kilo thinking they are taking home with them some of the nation’s finest. The name is actually a deformation of an Arabic word, or at least that’s what the experts think. The most widely accepted theory posits that it comes from “Yavayla”, meaning “hill”, which certainly makes sense since the town was eventually settled on a not-so-shabby plateau that looks out over the low-lying land around the Tajo River. According to this version, the unpronounceable word evolved into something that sounded closer to Spanish, “Zeboila”, and from there “Cebolla”. It’s a fairly common occurrence in languages when it comes to loanwords.
That Arabic was the source language shouldn’t come as such a shock. After all, the Muslims did control much of La Mancha for hundreds of years and that’s usually enough time to make an indelible mark on some of the place names. The region “La Mancha” itself most likely derives from the same tongue, probably from the word “manxa”, meaning “dry land”, which that pretty much sums up the climate here in a nutshell.
