TAMPA, Fla. — Long before high-rises and shipping ports lined the Hillsborough River, the word used to identify the region existed only in spoken indigenous dialects, recorded phonetically by sixteenth-century Spanish explorers who struggled to map the Florida peninsula. The earliest known written appearance of the name dates back to the memoir of Hernando de […] Sticks Of Fire: The Tangled Origins Behind The Name ‘Tampa’ ...read more read less