Guadalcanal is the largest island in the Solomon Islands, in the southwestern Pacific, north-east of Australia. Most learners meet the name in history class: in 1942 and 1943, Japanese and Allied forces fought a long, hard campaign there — jungle, heat, ships, and airfields. People say Guadalcanal and often mean that battle as much as the island itself. The island had the name long before the war. A Spanish explorer, Álvaro de Mendaña, named it in 1568 after his home town of Guadalcanal in Spain. That Spanish name is older still: it comes from Arabic wādī l-ḵānāt, Valley of the Stalls (a wadi is a valley). So a Pacific island carries a Spanish town’s name, and that town’s name carries an Arabic valley.