What's in a name? We wanted a name that would be distinctive, evocative, provocative, related, and unlimited.
A community service organization established in Santa Fe, NM, we picked these three strong animal totem names in Spanish to best convey our power, hopes and expectations. Initially headquartered on Coyote Trail, it is fitting that our first totem is the coyote, which is the same in both English and Spanish. In many traditions, coyote represents the Trickster. Often coyote is secondary to wolf, but it is fitting that in reality coyote has flourished while wolf has become endangered in most areas. Tecolote is just as powerful and more mysterious. Plug this word into most online Spanish to English dictionaries and you end up with no result. Yet locally, Tecolote is known as the owl, sometimes written as tecolote llanera, apparently from what we have been able to gather, a small owl of the region that often nests in unused prairie dog burrows. Finally, cuervo has been co-opted by a tequila company, which for whatever reason ignores on its websites that this is the Spanish word for raven, another powerful totem, known also for its trickery, knowledge, >and ability to survive. It is also fitting, since our focus is on community, that besides being multi-faceted and powerful totems, these three words are also the names of small communities in New Mexico.