The English Channel, as we know it in English, is the body of water that separates England and France, and indeed the United Kingdom from the rest of mainland Europe.
But the Spanish have their own name for the Channel and it has nothing to do with Castilla-La Mancha.
Back the 16th century English, Dutch and French cartographers all had different ideas about what to call this narrow stretch of water because at the time there was no legal jurisdiction over who owned it.
According to the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, the Dutch called it "The Canal Between England and France" (Die Canael tusschen Engelandt ende Franckryct, 1584), as well as "Oceanus Britannicus". The French maps also used the term “Le Canal entre Angleterre et la France”.
It wasn’t until the 17th century in fact that British cartographers began calling it 'The British Sea' or 'British Channel' and in the 18th century it finally became known as The English Channel, which we still use today.
Not everyone agreed on this moniker of course and eventually each country settled on their own names for this body of water. The French decided to name it La Manche meaning 'the sleeve', after its long narrow shape and other countries followed suit, like the Germans who call it Ärmelkanal, which also means sleeve.
So why does Spain call the English Channel El Canal de la Mancha?
Surprisingly, it doesn’t have anything to do with Don Quixote’s historical homeland of La Mancha, where Spain's most famous novel, written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1604, takes place. La Mancha is now part of the Spanish autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha.
The name El Canal de la Mancha is in fact down to a translation error.
Spanish cartographers wanted to follow France’s example and call it El Canal de la Manga – manga meaning sleeve in Spanish (manche in French).
However, whoever was tasked with translating the name got confused and ended up calling it El Canal de La Mancha instead of El Canal de la Manga. And this name has stuck ever since.
Interestingly, the name was translated correctly in Catalan, therefore the Catalans use the name Canal de la Mànega, which again like the French is the word for 'sleeve' (as well as for hose).
Mancha in Spanish actually means stain, but ‘Canal of the Stain’ makes no sense at all. When it comes to the region of Castilla-La Mancha it has an entirely different meaning. Historians believe the name La Mancha originates from Arabic and the Moors who ruled much of Spain for almost 400 years, and the south for 400 more.
In Arabic, Mancha would be pronounced Manxa or Al-Mansha, which translates as "land without water", and if you've ever been to this part of Spain you'll understand why.
Others believe it comes from the Arabic word Manya, which translated as "high plain" or "high place”. Part of Castilla-La Mancha lies on Spain's Meseta Central (Inner Plateau in English), a plateau covering a large part of the Iberian Peninsula's interior that's between 650 and 800 above sea level on average.
But obviously calling a narrow stretch of the Atlantic Ocean as a "land without water" or "high plain" wouldn’t make any sense, so we can safely assume that the translation error was a genuine mistake and that in Spanish The English Channel should actually be known as El Canal de la Manga.
Spain actually has its own manga or sleeve known as La Manga del Mar Menor, a narrow strip of land (similar to a sleeve) in the region of Murcia, which separates the Mar Menor lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea.
It's safe to say that whatever Elon Musk suggests - from renaming the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America or calling the English Channel the George Washington Channel - no amount of trolling on the part of the Tesla and X billionaire will stop the British from keep referring to this narrow stretch of water as The English Channel, and the Spanish calling it El Canal de la Mancha.
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