Cart Names in Jamaica

Abstract

~SITORS TO KINGSTON always notice and usually photograph the many pushcarts which are used for vending and for transporting goods. These brightly-painted carts appear on postcards and Tourist Board leaflets and are as distinctive a part of the city's local color as are the cable cars in San Francisco. To the tourists the carts are merely colorful items to delight their eyes and their cameras. To most residents of Kingston, they are functional parts of the city's econonlY. Labor is cheap, and machinery is expensive to obtain and expensive to maintain; it is often cheaper to transport goods from warehouse to retail shop by pushcart than by truck. Furthermore, the narrow streets of downtown Kingston were never designed for motor vehicles; the easily maneuverable carts are often faster for short runs. To the onomatologist, nowever, these carts have a special appeal. Jamaican law requires some distinctive mark for positive identification in case of theft. A few cart owners paint numbers on their carts or attach discarded automobile license plates. A few paint their own names on the side. A few rely entirely on a brilliant and unusual color combination. However, nearly all owners give fanciful names to their carts. The mechanislns and the motives in naming these carts reflect the cultural background of the Jamaican poorer class and are therefore of onomastic interest. Most of these carts fall into one of three types: handtrucks, handcarts, and snowball carts. The construction of each of these types is rigidly prescribed by tradition. One seldom finds even slight variations in construction, and the carts differ froin each other only in paint job and name. The handtruck, sometimes also called a jobcart, a carry-all, or a bauu [ba/u:] cart, consists of a heavy rectangular box, approximately four feet long, two and a half feet wide and deep, mounted on four wheels approximately five inches in diameter.