The term hammock was brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus during his first voyage. In his narrative, he mentioned, “A great many Indians in canoes came to the ship today to trade their cotton and hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep.” The earliest English reference can be found in Richard Eden’s 1555 translation of Italian historian Peter Martyr d’Anghiera’s The Decades of the Newe Worlde, where it was spelled as hamaca. Variations such as hamacco, hamacho, hamacoe, hamack, and hamock emerged before hammock became the standard spelling in the eighteenth century. Columbus learned the word from the Taíno language, where hamaka referred to various types of nets, possibly originating from a Proto-Arawak term with a similar sound that might have specifically meant “fish net”.
